Make a Mud Puddle

Male butterflies often visit mud puddles to obtain salts necessary for reproduction.  To create one in your own backyard, simply fill a pie plate with a 1:1 sand/compost mixture and keep the mixture moist.  You can then bury the pie plate in a sunny spot in your butterfly garden.


The outdoor landscape at the Butterfly Pavilion welcomes people, plants and wildlife.  Our habitat gardens are specifically designed to attract butterflies and other beneficial insects at all stages of their lives.  Shrubs, trees and groundcovers provide shelter for chrysalids and roosting adults.  Other plants, such as dill and showy milkweed, provide food for hungry caterpillars.  And, of course, our colorful flowers provide nectar to native butterflies from May to October.

Our gardens also emphasize sun-loving and drought-tolerant perennials that thrive in Colorado's climate.

See what's blooming in our gardens!

Create Your Own Butterfly Garden

It's easy to create or convert your landscape into a butterfly garden.   In just a few simple steps you can plant and maintain a habitat that attracts butterflies and provides them with what they need to survive during their entire life cycle.

Check out our How To Guide for step-by-step instructions.



Click to Print This Page

If it creeps, crawls, slithers, flies, wiggles or squirms, chances are you'll find it here. Come for the butterflies, then stay for the spiders, scorpions, millipedes, centipedes, horseshoe crabs, sea stars, and walking sticks. Love to learn? We also offer youth education programming, volunteer opportunities and lifelong learning. Only 15 minutes from downtown Denver. Butterflies are just the beginning.

6252 West 104th Ave. Westminster, CO 80020 • Map it • Hours

Invest in our future!



Enter your email address to receive information about special offers and upcoming events.

© 2009 Butterfly Pavilion. All rights reserved.