Butterfly Gardening: Creating Summer Magic in Your Garden [Paperback]

Xerces Society (Author), Smithsonian Institution (Author)

Book Description

Series: Sierra Club Books Publication | Publication Date: November 10, 1998

This revised edition of the classic handbook describes how to attract butterflies and other beneficial and beautiful insects to your garden. It presents everything the gardener needs to know to create intricate, small-scale ecosystems in an urban or suburban setting that can substitute for the rapidly vanishing habitats that are essential to the survival of butterflies.
Contributors to this volume include Miriam Rothschild, an eminent entomologist, avid butterfly gardener, and expert in wildflower conservation, who describes the life cycle of butterflies, how and what they see, and how this relates to "gardening with butterflies." Landscape architect Mary Booth provides imaginative garden designs and easy-to-follow directions for designing and planting. Edward S. Ross, pioneer of close-up nature photography, discusses observing and photographing butterflies.
The book also includes a "Master Plant List" of species that attract butterflies, butterfly food plants listed by geographic region, seed and plant resources, a list of gardening and conservation organizations, and a bibliography of books and periodicals about butterflies.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

This new edition of the classic handbook describes how to attract butterflies and other beneficial and beautiful insects to you garden.

Butterfly Gardening presents everything the gardener needs to know to create intricate, small-scale ecosystems in an urban or suburban setting that can substitute for the rapidly vanishing habitats that are essential to the survival of butterflies.  Contributors to this volume include Miriam Rothschild, an eminent entomologist, avid butterfly gardener and expert in wildflower conservation, who describes the life cycle of the butterfly, how and what they see, and how this relates to "gardening with butterflies."  Landscape architect Mary Booth provides imaginative garden designs and easy-to-follow direction for designing and planting.  Edward S. Ross, pioneer of close-up nature photography, discusses observing and photographing butterflies.

The book also includes a "Master Plant List" of species that attract butterflies, butterfly food plants listed geographically, seed and plant sources, a list of gardening and conservation organizations, and a bibliography of books and periodicals about butterflies.

About the Author

The Xerces Society was established in 1971 as a non-profit organization dedicated to the prevention of human-caused extinction of rare invertebrate populations and their habitats. The Society's efforts include the Monarch Project and publication of Wings, a magazine devoted to the natural history and conservation of butterflies and other invertebrates.

Product Details

• Paperback: 228 pages
• Publisher: Sierra Club Books; 2nd edition (November 10, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0871569752
• ISBN-13: 978-0871569752
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #588,609 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #73 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Biological Sciences > Animals > Butterflies

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great starter book as well as an advanced resource., December 14, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Butterfly Gardening: Creating Summer Magic in Your Garden (Paperback)

This book gives you comprehensive advice on starting and appreciating a butterfly garden in a small, and easily digestible package. It includes sections on butterfly natural history and identification, garden design, sample garden plans, a plant guide, predators, photography and conservation. It's a great starter book for those interested in creating their own garden but also has a good appendix section for those who want to get a little deeper into the subject. This would make a great gift for someone wanting to start his or her own garden.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent guide book, September 20, 2000

By 

Angela D. Hance "sweetlip" (Creston, IA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Butterfly Gardening: Creating Summer Magic in Your Garden (Paperback)

I'm an up and coming butterfly gardener. This book had a great deal of information to share not only regarding what species of flowers to plant, but also about the life cycles of the butterfly and the importance of planting your garden for the entire life cycle - from egg, to caterpillar, to butterfly Discussion focused on butterfly/larva predators and how important they are to the cycle. Tips on photography, particularly in the dark were helpful. The pictures of the butterflies and flowers were exquisite! I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and the information in it will go a long way in helping me create my dream garden.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent resource..., September 16, 2001

By 

Dianne Foster "Di" (USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Butterfly Gardening: Creating Summer Magic in Your Garden (Paperback)

BUTTERFLY GARDENING is a collection of interesting essays about butterflies. Chapters cover gardening tips, including an annotated list of plants that attract butterflies, and various other butterfly related topics such as: "What do butterflies see?"; "The struggle to survive"; "The life cycle of the large white butterfly"; and "Moths in the garden at night." If you love butterflies, you will probably enjoy this book but it won't go a long way toward helping you identify the Red Admiral you spotted on the Frikartii Aster yesterday. Another reviewer referred to this as a starter book, but I don't think of it as that at all although it does introduce a number of important topics.

The book includes a few "designs" for butterfly gardens, but they are general, and you would do better to use the garden designs in THE AUDUBON BACKYARD BIRD WATCHER. Let's face it, where the birds are is where their dinner is and dinner for birds is often the larval stage of moths and butterflies. The plant lists in BUTTERFLY GARDENING are adequate. Certainly the best thing to plant is Buddleia..the butterfly bush. This morning I saw three Monarch butterflies on my lavendar flowered Buddleia. The bush also supports a Grandpa Otts morning glory vine which produces flowers that are a dark bluish purple which changes to a purplish magenta. The butterflies were flitting from flower to flower and the color combo was a knockout.

This little book has much to recommend it. From BUTTERFLY GARDENING I learned the value of Parsley for larvae and that no matter how many butterfly boxes one hangs the little critters are visitors not tenants.