(GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass.) – Project Native has opened a Native Butterfly House to the public at its native plant nursery on North Plain Road in order to promote the connection between native habitats and local wildlife. An open house to unveil the new facility will be held on Friday, August 16, 2013, from 5 to 6:30 p.m.
The new 35-by-55-foot structure encloses a garden of native plants grown at Project Native, all of which support the life cycle of native butterflies. Staff and visiting children have been collecting native butterflies from the Project Native property to populate the butterfly house, which is open to the public daily from 10 to 4.
“People see a beautiful butterfly but they don’t connect it to their landscape,” Project Native education director Karen LeBlanc said. “With the butterfly house they will understand that caterpillars need certain plants to live and eat. If you don’t have the plants, you’re not going to get the butterfly.”
LeBlanc first conceived of the butterfly house after placing caterpillars in small butterfly huts on the property. Soon she discovered that visitors and staff were fascinated by watching the life cycle as a caterpillar becomes a chrysalis and then emerges as a butterfly, and proposed building a structure large enough to contain permanent plantings and facilitate learning.
“We just had this little spicebush swallowtail caterpillar and decided that we had to make this bigger,” LeBlanc said.
Donations from two board members and a grant from Berkshire Bank allowed Project Native to build the $20,000 structure this spring. Groups of children have gone on butterfly safaris for several weekends in search of caterpillars and butterflies to populate the enclosed garden. Two interns — Peter Slothower of Ithaca, N.Y., and Ellen Drews of Oak Park, Ill. — have helped LeBlanc put together education programs for the new garden and lead personalized tours.
“It’s so important that it be about the habitat and the life of the butterfly, otherwise it’s just a zoo where you just animals but walk away not really understanding anything new about nature,” LeBlanc said. “Our butterfly house is a catalyst to learn about what is going on around you with the habitat and environment. It’s sometimes hard to get people interested in plants, especially children, but give them something that crawls and has wings and they are a lot more interested.”
Some of the butterflies in the house now include the great spangled fritillary, monarchs, tiger swallowtails, black swallowtails, spicebush swallowtails, as well as several moths. The early reaction from visitors has been very enthusiastic.
“We had one person who thought we had painted gold on the monarch chrysalis, but no – that’s just the way Mother Nature works,” LeBlanc said. “It’s been so exciting to watch and learn as we do this. They’ve become like our own pets. We want to see how they are doing and the ways they are developing. It’s a wonderful thing to watch.”
Project Native’s mission is to promote, restore and sustain native habitats in the Berkshire Taconic region. The 13-year-old nonprofit organization grows native plants from seeds collected in the region and makes them available to the public with its retail/wholesale nursery, located on Route 41 in Housatonic just four miles north of downtown Great Barrington. The fields and forests of the 54-acre former dairy farm have been largely cleared of invasive plants to restore its landscape with native habitats that include trails, a native-plant seed bank, and educational activities. Native plants as defined by Project Native, are plants that existed in the region prior to the arrival of Europeans in the 17th century.
Project Native is open from 9:30am – 5:00pm Monday through Saturday and 10:30am – 5pm Sunday, from mid-April through November. For more information, visit Project Native or call 413-274-3433.