Botanical Gardens: Butterfly House

Stop To Smell The Flowers

So a while back I marked another thing off my 757 Bucket list.  I was able to visit the Norfolk Botanical Gardens with one of my girlfriends and her two little girls.

These posts have been sitting in my draft folder, so please forgive me.

Mini Tour Guide

Can I just pause a moment here?  I just love viewing the world through a child's eyes!  They see things that you may never notice.

There are lots of things to explore there, but I'm going to focus on the Butterfly House in this post.  This is what I really wanted to see when we went there.

The enclosed house provides an unbelievable opportunity to observe butterflies as they circle and land on their favorite nectar flowers providing amazement and educational opportunities. It’s the perfect compliment to the 2.5 acre Bristow Butterfly Garden and the giant Butterfly Maze. Included with regular Garden admission.

Giant Swallowtail Butterfly

My buddy has a membership so I didn't even have to pay for admission.  Not why I'd mentioned wanting to go there though.  It's just something I've always wanted to do.  Wish I'd read about the Butterfly Maze before just now.  I would have liked to explore that as well.  Oh well!

Identification Charts Help

It's really cool to walk in the enclosure.  There are butterflies everywhere! I honestly hadn't expected to see so many butterflies.  They even hand you a chart so that you can identify the butterflies there.

There's are ribbons tied to plants so you can spot their eggs on host plants and watch as the caterpillars continually eat and grow. The opportunity to witness their final transformation as the chrysalis opens to reveal a winged beauty is what makes the Butterfly House so thrilling.

A big shout out to my buddy, Elizabeth, and her little girls for taking me and sharing a really great experience.