The first shipment of butterflies arrives May 19. Two more shipments follow. By the time the Irvine Nature Center Butterfly Enclosure opens to the public on May 25, there should be 300 butterflies to get up close and personal with.
"I've been here for six years, and this is the first new significant exhibit since then," Robert Mardiney, educational director at the Irvine Nature Center, 11201 Garrison Forest Road in Owings Mills, said of the enclosure.
On a cool late April morning, though, less than a month before the initial shipment, the enclosure is a work in progress. After 18 months of design and construction, not to mention the three years previously of dreaming and hoping before an anonymous donor turned up, there is a basic structure. It is 13- by 10-feet in size, attached to a side of the center's front entrance.
Still to come are screens for the floor-to-ceiling windows, ceiling netting from which butterflies like to dangle, a concrete pathway on the dirt floor, and shelves and floor planters for the flowers and nectar on which they feed. Construction costs, excluding labor, staff time and future maintenance, have run about $17K.
The Nature Center's preschool has been enlisted to help. Groups of toddlers are busy filling small clay pots with soil and butterflies' favorite plants, such as lavender and purple coneflowers, to be arranged on the shelves.
"We've been talking about the enclosure all year. The children are very excited," said preschool teacher Paula Jackson.
Eli Beck and River Kercz, preschool students, agreed with her.
"I like butterflies, caterpillars, insects and dinosaurs," said Eli, age 4, son of Kirsten Beck, of Owings Mills.
"I like butterflies," said River, also 4, son of Misty Kercz, of Baltimore City. "I like putting water [in the soil] and making dirt."
There are two kinds of butterfly enclosures: year-round and seasonal. The former tends to be indoors and to showcase butterflies from around the world. For example, the Niagara Parks Butterfly Conservatory, in Niagra Falls, Canada, has more than 45 species of tropical butterflies from Australia and Central America.
Seasonal enclosures like Irvine's, which are open to the weather, tend to focus on native butterflies and plants. Irvine is starting with a variety of species, all of which are found in Maryland and may include Painted Ladies, Monarchs, Spicebush Swallowtails, Black Swallowtails, Tiger Swallowtails, Red Admirals, American Ladies, Red-spotted Purples, Question Marks and Viceroys.
"People like butterflies but they don't know about their importance in the ecology and how they interact in nature," Mardiney said of the class of insects in the order lepidoptera.
It's "a great teaching tool," he added of the enclosure, which will be open from spring to fall and have staff on-hand to answer questions.
Laura Soder, animal care and exhibit coordinator at Irvine, did the months of research behind the enclosure project. "A lot more went into it than butterflies and plants. We wanted it to fit into what the center had," she said.
There area no standard designs for butterfly enclosures. But there are a few prominent examples, such as the Niagara Parks Butterfly Conservancy and the BioWorks Butterfly Garden, which includes a screened-in enclosure, of the Museum of Science and Industry in Tampa, Fl.
"It's fairly unusual for a center our size to have an enclosure. Most are in larger museums," said Soder, who consulted with both Niagara and Tampa.
She also helped to choose the right location for the center's enclosure, a sunny place with easy access to water and convenient for visitors. She found a butterfly breeder and two native plant suppliers, Sylva Native Nursery and Mid-Atlantic Natives/Superior Nursery, both in Pennsylvania.
The butterfly breeder is Shady Oak Farms, in Florida, which rears butterflies for release at events and for exhibits and educational settings such as classrooms. Pricing varies by species; the more common and easily reared butterflies such as Painted Ladies cost less than the larger and showier butterflies such as Swallowtails.
So far, the cost of insects and plants has come to $3,000.
Soder ordered a mixed bag of species depending on what was available at the time, at a cost of $140 to $300 per shipment. Except for Monarchs, adult butterflies live no longer than two weeks, so she ordered both adults and pupa, aka chrysalides.
We can initially have butterflies in the exhibit and also have some pupa that will be hatching within a week of the original arrival," she said of the shipments.
As the season progresses, Souder intends to focus on the Monarchs, Painted Ladies and all three species of Swallowtails. She will collect eggs and larva that are laid by the purchased adults and rear them at the nature center, cutting the cost of future shipments.
The Irvine Butterfly Enclosure isn't the only, or even the first, such enclosure in Baltimore, or even Maryland. Ladew Topiary Gardens, in Monkton, opened its 30- by 50-feet screened-in enclosure last year. It has proven to be a popular attraction.
"We saw other places [had enclosures]. We thought it would be a good fit for Ladew," said Sue Myers, Ladew teacher and naturalist, who notes that most of the 40,000 visitors the gardens welcome per season visit its butterfly enclosure.
"It's a wonderful hands-on experience. We have programming around the butterflies' life cycle and how they interact with plants," she said.
At Niagara Parks Butterfly Conservatory, curator Cheryl Tyndall estimates the indoor enclosure gets 300,000 visitors per year. The conservatory is part of the Niagara Parks Botanical Gardens, which opened in 1996, a portion of which is planted to attract butterflies.
"There are a number of butterfly conservatories and enclosures around the world, some much older than us. Great Britain has had them for decades," Tyndall said.
On a much smaller scale, she continued, "you see garden centers that have small enclosures with butterflies, to promote their plants and healthy habitats."
Likewise, the BioWorks Butterfly Garden, part of Tampa's Museum of Science and Industry, includes a screened-in enclosure. Both opened in 1995 and since then, incidentally, have been the scene for at least one wedding proposal per year.
Kristen Gilpin, outside coordinator, estimates the museum attracts half to three-quarters of a million visitors per year, of whom 75 percent visit the butterfly garden and enclosure.
"It matters to have an outdoor garden with butterflies so people can understand them in their habitat," she said. "The enclosure allows visitors to be close to butterflies they only see from a distance. We have an area in the enclosure where people can stand among the butterflies. They fall in love with them."
Butterfly enclosures are popular but they are not, say the experts, a trend. "I wouldn't say there are more of them than before," said Mary Mathias, of the Association of Science- Technology Centers, a Washington-D.C. based professional group for science centers, museums and related institutions.
At Irvine Nature Center, educational director Mardiney is planning a schedule of programs and events for the public and the center's summer camp revolving around the butterfly enclosure. Admission to Irvine Nature Center is free, as will be admission to the butterfly enclosure.
For example, since Monarch butterflies migrate, they will be tagged and released into the wild in early fall on a to-be-announced Monarch Release Day.
"Hopefully, whoever finds them, in Florida or Mexico, will let us know," he said.