6 Cool Facts About Butterfly Houses

Kirsten SchraderKirsten SchraderUpdated: Jul. 12, 2021
monarch flyingCourtesy Kristina Lishawa

Take a tour of these popular destinations where butterflies roam.

Butterfly houses are popular places to visit. Check out these six facts about them:

  1. During the Butterfly Pavilion’s 2017 Milkweed Seed Giveaway, 825,600 seeds were distributed to guests of this Denver area hot spot. The goal was to get more people involved in the restoration of declining monarch habitat.
  2. The first butterfly house in the U.S., Butterfly World in Florida began on just 3 acres in 1988. It’s now the largest in the world with 10 acres of aviaries, botanical gardens and a butterfly farm.
  3. Watch butterflies be released two times a day in the Wings of the Tropics exhibit at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Florida. Kids love the up-close moments with exotic species, such as morphos and owl butterflies.
  4. More than 1,000 butterflies fly freely throughout the glass-enclosed conservatory at the Cecil B. Day Butterfly Center in Georgia.
  5. About 40 percent of the butterflies at the Butterfly Conservatory in Niagara Falls, Ontario, are raised in a quarantined greenhouse on site. The other 60 percent are imported from the tropics.
  6. The Butterfly House in Chesterfield, Missouri, features an 8,000-square-foot glass conservatory that is home to 80 butterfly species and 150 tropical plant species. (Read more! 11 Must-Have Host Plants for Butterflies)

Originally Published: September 22, 2017

Kirsten Schrader
Kirsten Schrader
Kirsten has more than 15 years of experience writing and editing birding and gardening content. As content director of Birds & Blooms, she leads the team of editors and freelance writers sharing tried-and-true advice for nature enthusiasts who love to garden and feed birds in their backyards. Since joining Birds & Blooms 17 years ago, Kirsten has held roles in digital and print, editing direct-to-consumer books, running as many as five magazines as a time and managing special interest publications. Kirsten has traveled to see amazing North American birds, and attended various festivals, including Sedona Hummingbird Festival, Rio Grande Bird Festival, The Biggest Week in American Birding Festival and Cape May Spring Festival. She has also witnessed the epic sandhill crane migration while on a photography workshop trip to Colorado. Kirsten has participated in several GardenComm and Outdoor Writers Association of America annual conferences and is a member of the Wisconsin Society for Ornithology. When she's not researching, writing and editing all things birding and gardening, Kirsten is enjoying the outdoors with her nature-loving family. She and her husband are slowly chipping away at making their small acreage the backyard of their dreams.