Preschool Nature – Creating a Butterfly Nursery

By Charlene Haukom

What preschooler isn’t fascinated by butterflies? With their big, bright wings, it’s hard not be drawn to them. Creating a butterfly nursery will teach preschoolers all about butterflies – and a lot about gardening, too!

What You Will Need

A Garden Bed or Container for Plants
Garden Stakes (optional)
Host Plants
Garden Shovel or Trowel
Gardening Gloves
Gardening Apron (optional)

How to Create the Butterfly Nursery

A butterfly nursery is a garden bed or container full of host plants for baby butterflies – in other words, food for hungry caterpillars! How do you get baby butterflies into the garden? By providing food for adult butterflies! The host plant list names a few that feed both caterpillars and butterflies, but you can find additional butterfly favorites in Preschool Nature – Create a Wildlife Observatory.

Step 1: Decide where your butterfly nursery will be. Will you be planting a container garden, or do you have room in an existing garden bed? Measure the area you have available for planting, whether in the ground or in a pot.

Step 2: Choose your plants. Grab your list of host plants and head to a local nursery or garden center with your preschooler. To create visual interest in your garden or container, you’ll want to choose tall, medium, and short plants with varying bloom periods. Start out by walking around the garden center with your preschooler. Locate the plants from the host list and let your preschooler explore them. Are the flowers pretty? Does it smell nice? The larger the role preschoolers play in plant selection, the more interested they’ll be in the butterfly nursery.

Step 3: After purchasing your plants, arrange them in the garden bed or container while they’re still in pots. This will help you and your preschooler visualize what the garden will eventually look like. It also allows you to move plants around until you’ve found the perfect arrangement. *Tip: Plant the tallest host plants in the center of your bed, or in the back of a border. Next will be the medium plants, then finish with the shortest plants around the edge of the bed or in the front of a border.

Step 4: Get dirty! Preschoolers love digging in dirt, so gardening is a great hobby for them. Hand them a trowel and let them dig away. If you’re using a container, they can still “dig” from the potting soil bag while helping you fill the container. Plant the host plants in the arrangement you settled on in Step 3. You may need to stake the taller plants to keep them from falling over.

Step 5: Water well, then relax with your preschooler and watch for butterflies! Take your preschooler out daily to check on the plants. Peek at the underside of leaves – do you see any butterfly eggs?

Other Ways to Enjoy Butterflies With Your Preschooler

If you don’t have room in your garden bed or a place to put a container garden, you can still encourage your preschooler’s interest in nature. Use the host plant list to teach your preschoolers about the different phases of a butterfly’s life. You can also take them to the garden center to learn about host plants or walk them through your existing garden in search of butterfly eggs. Visit www.ButterflyBushes.com for more information on butterfly host plants.

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