For the next two months, the Fort Worth Botanic Garden will serve as something of a butterfly daycare, hostel, and retirement home all rolled into one. With lifespans of only one to two weeks, visitors to the Garden will have an opportunity to get up close and personal with 32 different species of butterfly during each stage of their short but beautiful lives.
Running daily from March 1 through April 30, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Butterflies in the Garden is the largest exhibit of live butterflies in North Central Texas. “We have more butterflies this year than we’ve ever had in the past,” says Dena Lewis, public relations and branding manager of Botanic Garden. “And they’ve been super active, which has been really fun to watch so early in the exhibit timeline.”
The exhibit has quickly become a small cornerstone of the greenspace’s many yearly offerings. The mass of butterflies first came in 2000, operating on a biannual basis until more recent years, when a major refresh to the Rain Forest Conservatory in 2020 — and steady requests for the butterflies to stick around — secured them a place in the garden for a select time each year…