Butterfly Gardens and Relaxation

We all enjoy being able to use our time to do something, to get us ahead in life, so that we are number one, better, richer, stronger, faster, right or wrong? Some of us are concerned with our carbon footprint. Others of us have redefined the word richer to mean something about our surroundings, our biome – just so you don’t get confused if I use the word environment, and interpret it to mean the office environment or the school environment or the cafeteria environment. I’m writing to you about the outdoor environment, bringing a little of it safely into your path, by way of a butterfly garden.

There are butterfly gardens in diverse places such as South Dakota, Florida, Delaware and California. These are small-scale plantations designed to attract small creatures such as butterflies. These gardens may also nurture preying mantises, tiny frogs, and hummingbirds, all of which are creatures that some people are bemoaning the short supply of.

According to the law of economic theory, when there is a demand, there is a reward for creating a supply – so, if there is a demand for butterflies, ladybugs, hummingbirds, preying mantises, etc… we should work on creating a supply in order to satiate the demand for these cute little life forms.

A butterfly garden can be created in a small space, and requires 1/10th of an acre or more to create, basically, a plot of land about the size of which someone might use to place a push-cart to sell ice cream, roasted nuts or hot dogs – things that we already have plenty of; whereas our modern society has eliminated butterflies. The garden could be contained within a mesh, a glass dome, or a building structure, if need be.

This concept could even be taken indoors into decaying neighborhoods like inner harbor Baltimore, Detroit, the Bronx, Haarlem, or Jacksonville – as a way of bringing hope back into the community; and bringing things of beauty back into the places that have lost them as an economic opportunity cost.

America is a land that was once known for its botanical and biological diversity, which brought floods of tourists as well as immigrants to our nation. We still have some of these tourists, who visit places like the Grand Canyon, the Great Smoky Mountains, and the Everglades every year. We have opportunities for eco-tourism, which is the rage in Europe now that people are aware of the fact that we have irreversibly damaged our natural environment, many of us would like to preserve a little bit of it.

That’s all a butterfly garden does, is to bring a little bit of the biome to a place where working people are able to see it. It’s a place for relaxation, contemplation, and meditation for people who feel disconnected or stressed out. A butterfly garden or similar idea in your community could be a valuable asset.

Other ideas that could be useful for local parks include dog runs, complete with mile markers and biodegradable poop bags; koi ponds, complete with aeration and filtration systems, a few lilypads, and some tadpoles; and arborculture incubators, for communities with goals of increasing the tree population.