Butterfly Garden Sketch

I went out to the library today to look at our site. It looks great! Here is the outline of our location. We're going to have a design competition with our members, so print this off and fill it in with the plants on our plant list for the garden. I look forward to seeing them!

We're going to need help!

Stars & Stripes is getting ready to put in a butterfly garden at the Tower Road library. We hope to attract Zebra long wings, black swallowtails, monarchs, sulfurs, gulf fritillary, Easter Tiger swallowtail, and Giant swallowtail.

We're going to need to work on getting some donations. If you'd like to help with collecting donations, let me know. I can use all the help I can get.

Here's a list of materials:
--landscape timbers for edging
--soaker hoses or drip irrigation
--mulch
--lumber to build an arbor

We also are working on getting a bunch of plants donated. If you have any of these in your yard or know someone that might be able to donate plants, please let us know.

Nectar Plants
--Fire bush
--Milkweed
--Gaillardia
--Coreopsis
--Mist Flower
--Porterweed
--Tropical Sage
--Snow Square Stem
--Fire Spike
--Pentas
--Mexican Sunflowers
--Zinnias

Host Plants
--Passion vine
--Parsely
--Milkweed
--Cassia
--Wild Cherry Tree
--Wild Lime or Citrus Tree

I got some free zinnias already although we could probably use some more. I also have coreopsis seed and have dug up some passion flower from my yard. The passion flower is not in the best of shape, so it may not make it.

I'm going to the library this week to take pictures of our site. I'll send out measurements and then any interested members can do a garden design. The club will vote on which design we like and that will be the one that goes into the library!

Butterfly Gardening!

Ms. Wendy Wilbur, our Alachua County horticulture agent, was the guest speaker at our last meeting. She's going to help us with our butterfly garden at the Tower Road library.

Designing our garden.






Butterflies have tongues that they drink with. Here are 4-Hers are butterflies and flowers.

Last meeting of the 2007-2008 year!

Dear parents,

Our last 4-H meeting of the year is this Thursday! But, we still have a few more activities after that. We'll be meeting at the Eubanks' house at 5:30. Here's what we're planning on talking/doing on Thursday.

We'll have a recap of the youth fair and the great job our members did at it. We'll talk about possible fair projects for next year.

Wendy Wilbur, Alachua County horticulture agent, will be talking to the club about community gardens. She's going to help us organize our long-term service project - a butterfly garden at Tower Road library! We haven't scheduled a date for putting the garden in yet, but it will most likely be a Saturday afternoon in May.

We'll also be talking about officer positions for next year and answer any questions the members might have.

We'll also be having an end-of-year party at the end of May, so we'll be talking more about that. We'll be holding officer elections then, so encourage your kids to be thinking about what office they want to hold.

And, we'll be having a parents' meeting May 15 to discuss what activities we want to do over the summer and what we'd like to do next year.

Last meeting, the kids were asked to identify a Floridian butterfly, their host plant, and their larval plant. Remind your kids to look for those. Here's a good resource for kids on butterflies - http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu:8080/wings/.

Please let me know if you can come and remember to bring your t-shirt money if you'd like a t-shirt!
Thanks.
Emily