We are hoping that this tropical butterfly house will be only the first part of a larger venture.
If all goes well, we plan to build an outdoor butterfly garden to attract our lovely native butterflies like Red Admirals, Peacocks, Brimstones and Painted Ladies to name but a few. This will include not only the flowering plants that attract butterflies but also the food plants that their larvae feed on like fennel, privet, stinging nettle and poplar.
Later we hope to build a beetle garden. Did you know that we have over 4000 species of beetles native to our islands? Some we all know well like ladybirds and may bugs, but others are seldom seen although they are often in our gardens and ponds.
We also plan to build two 'climate change' gardens, one to show which plants and animals may benefit and which will suffer if our weather gets much hotter and dryer, and the other to show what might happen if our summers get much wetter and our winters colder!