On the same early August day that I visited the Smithsonian’s Heirloom Garden, I also enjoyed a long walk back and forth through the Butterfly Habitat Garden, located on the east side of the National Museum of Natural History.
The garden is made up of plants that have specific relationships to the life cycles of eastern U.S. butterflies. As you walk along, you pass sections that mimic habitats important to the insects: wetlands, meadows, edges of woods, urban gardens.
It’s a long corridor really, bordered by busy 9th Street, N.W., on one side and the museum’s parking lot on the other. Yet, stepping in, you feel enveloped in another world, one that combines a little city polish with naturalism.
I offer these pictures from last summer as more inspiration for those in cold climates who are deep into their nursery catalogs and graph paper, planning for spring.
I haven’t labeled all the plants because the Smithsonian’s interactive map at this link has plant lists for each habitat. (However, they do not include the grey-green plants in the first and seventh photos [It’s dinosaur kale, possibly Brassica oleracea var. acephala ‘Lacinato’ or ‘Cavalo Nero’] or the tall plants with the small, purple, fuzzy blooms in the tenth. [It’s Ironweed, Vernonia. Thanks James Golden.] Can anyone identify them? I feel they are just on the tip of my brain.)
To see much larger versions of the slideshow photos, click on ‘Continue reading’ below and then click on the first thumbnail. You’ll be able to scroll through the images in succession. Continue reading “The butterfly garden”
enclos*ure 