The Start of the Butterfly Gardens
Kregg Hoehn, who holds the parks and recreation chair on the Schofield City Council, had an idea. An idea that he would put in to action in the summer of 2010. Kregg wanted to add a butterfly garden to the James H. Krause Mayors' Park on Spring St. This idea would be put in to motion and four years later it is still thriving.
Kregg wanted to add something to our park that no other park had. The idea of a butterfly garden was a perfect one. It would attract newcomers to our park not because of different playground equipment or a new sports complex, but because of something both fun and educational. Other parks around here did not have something like a butterfly garden. Adding this would attract many more newcomers to our park. Kregg also thought that this would give children a neat way to watch the growth and transformation of butterflies. The cool thing is that anyone can come and watch this during the summer, and have a great time while learning something new.
One of the first things Kregg had to do was to find a way to house the caterpillars before they turned in to butterflies. This is how the butterfly sanctuaries came to be built. These sanctuaries are made with a wooden frame, and a mesh is nailed on to the frame to allow people to watch the caterpillars and give them enough air. There is a small door on the side of the sanctuary that allows you to put caterpillars in, and to put in milkweed plants. The plant caterpillars mainly live off of. The sanctuaries are also on wheels which makes it easier to bring them out everyday in summer for people to come and see them.
The next order of business was to find caterpillars. One can easily find caterpillars in wide open fields that are full of milkweed. This is exactly what Kregg did. He went in to open fields and found caterpillars to start his butterfly gardens. He also planted some milkweed plants at the park in order to attract some more caterpillars to our park. This would make it easier to find caterpillars to populate the butterfly sanctuaries.
Finally he wanted to find a way that would continue to attract these butterflies back to our park. This was the point of the butterfly gardens. Flowers that are planted in butterfly gardens are plants that butterflies are most attracted to. These flowers contain pollen that the butterflies eat. The two butterfly gardens that were planted at the park would attract the butterflies that were released back to our park. Then the butterflies will lay eggs and the caterpillars will hatch causing the whole cycle to repeat itself.