Butterfly Garden

Six Butterfly Gardens found on the University of Kentucky campus, along with information specific to each location.  

General information about the gardens can be found here:  Map of the Butterfly Garden Locations, Garden by Garden Plant Key, Information and Pictures of Butterfly Plants, and picture updates can be found on our Flickr page.

Greenhouse is UK’s Environment and Sustainability Residential College and is housed in Woodland Glen II (see http://greenhouse.as.uky.edu/). Students in Greenhouse are required to enroll in two connected courses, one course per fall and spring semesters. During the fall of 2015 semester, students enrolled in UK 100 Pathways and Barriers to Environmental Sustainability participated in a hands-on project to create six butterfly gardens on UK’s campus. The gardens were designed, under the supervision of Dr. Carmen Agouridis, by technical staff member Tyler Sanderson and undergraduate students Coleman Stivers and Adam Garner all from the Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering Department.

A butterfly garden is a flowering garden designed to attract butterflies. Such gardens contain nectar plants which provide food for the butterflies and host plants on which the butterflies lay their eggs. Butterfly gardens require approximately six hours of sun per day. Not only are butterflies beautiful, but they are pollinators. The United States Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (USDA-NRCS) states that pollinators such as butterflies, bees and bats are responsible for supporting about 35% of the world’s food crops.