"No matter the size or shape of your growing area, this will guide you through creating a butterfly-friendly space." -Mother Earth News
Welcome the world's most exquisite visitors to your garden! Gardening for Butterflies, by the experts at the Xerces Society, introduces you to a variety of butterflies who need our help, and shows you how to design a habitat where they will thrive. This optimistic call to arms is packed with everything you need to create a beautiful, pollinator-friendly garden. You will learn why butterflies matter, why they are in danger, and what simple steps we can take to make a difference. You'll also learn how to choose the right plants and how to create a garden that flutters and flourishes with life.
Gardening for Butterflies is an optimistic call to arms by the experts at the Xerces Society that provides home gardeners with everything they need to create a beautiful, beneficial, butterfly-filled garden. This full-color guide is a must-have for anyone who wants to help bring back the butterflies!
The Xerces Society is a nonprofit organization based in Portland, Oregon, that protects wildlife through the conservation of invertebrates and their habitat. Established in 1971, the Society is at the forefront of invertebrate protection worldwide, harnessing the knowledge of scientists and the enthusiasm of citizens to implement conservation programs. They are the authors of 100 Plants to Feed the Bees, Farming with Native Beneficial Insects, and Attracting Native Pollinators.
Preface: Butterfly Gardeners Can Change the World
A couple of us writing this book grew up during the last gasp of the American muscle car. We have teenage memories of rocketing in Plymouth Barracudas and Chevy Novas down old country roads in the Midwest and the Great Plains. Even a short drive back then resulted in hundreds of dead bugs splattered across the grille, so we were always washing those cars. Returning to our teenage haunts today with a few gray hairs, vastly more fuel-efficient cars, and the lens of professional conservationists, we are awestruck by the lack of bugs. Drive across the entire state of North Dakota, Nebraska, or Iowa now, and your car will be practically spotless when you get to the other side. Animals, including insects, are disappearing.
A global assessment of wildlife populations in 2014 released by the World Wide Fund for Nature and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) found that the sheer number vertebrates on earth had declined by more than 50 percent since 1970. While the ZSL report did not assess insect populations, irrefutable evidence of their decline and clear examples of insect extinctions can be found. Many of the rare insects have always been rare, but now once-common insects are becoming rare as well. The most striking example of this is the iconic monarch butterfly, whose population has declined by 80 percent across North America since monitoring efforts began in the mid-1990s.
Loss and degradation of habitat is driving this disappearing act. Urban landscapes divide up, pave over, and fragment formerly green spaces. Agriculture favors fewer types of crops, leaves fewer edges unplowed and untrampled, and tolerates ever fewer "pests." The wild places that remain bear the indignities of invasive species, climate uncertainties, and hardscrabble resource extraction such as mining and logging. The net result is that 7 billion humans have finally created a fully human-dominated world.
Despite the biodiversity crisis unfolding in real time all around us, we believe that butterflies and other animals can have a secure future. However, such a future will require reconciliation between the human environment and a more natural one. Policies that could accelerate such a reconciliation are desperately needed. At the same time, as individuals we cannot simply stand by and do nothing while we wait for those policies. At least in the case of butterflies, e
