Butterfly gardening

I tag my first monarch and see more tagged monarchs in the garden. Exciting!

What flowers have been feeding butterflies in March?

Are caterpillars safe from invasive wasps now and can we leave them to develop without intervention?

Yellow admirals have brought colour and energy at the changing of the season.

With autumn arriving, butterfly lovers have started tagging monarchs and they are appearing in my garden

Results of my Big Butterfly Count surveys and I try to fathom why I have butterflies while many haven't

Late summer flowers for butterflies? The long-flowering perennials just keep going.

Red and yellow admirals find the flower garden, joining monarchs, blues and cabbage whites.

Please spare 15 minutes for this NZ butterfly citizen science project! The Big Butterfly Count is back!

What are the best butterfly flowers for mid-summer in Auckland?

The wild weather has been a curse, but the silver lining has been relief for the butterflies & plants

A return visit to Franklin Farm butterfly house in Waimauku, west Auckland, inspires me.

An update on all the wins and losses recently in the garden: Butterflies, wildlife & plants

These are the flowers that the butterflies are really attracted to in the first month of summer.

Monarchs start visiting the butterfly garden and I start raising admirals alongside them

You don't need to leave central Sydney to see beautiful butterflies. Just head for the royal botanic garden.

A couple of successful wasp trap lures plus loads that did not work. Plus a new wasp to contend with.

November 2025 I have written about copper butterflies previously , and how I was planting muehlenbeckia, their host plant, despite the butterfly garden being over half a kilometre from the coast and perhaps not providing the right environment for copper butterflies. They are most likely to be found within sight of a beach (as are most New Zealanders, to be fair) but the inland sightings on iNaturalist gave me a little hope. I have three types of muehlenbeckia now, with two j

Killing wasps now saves butterflies. Find out the unusual place I found a paper wasp nest.

Moths and Butterflies of New Zealand (MBNZT) certification is given to best practice butterfly and moth habitats. How does Auckland Butterfly Garden stack up so far?