CHAPTER 5

DESIGNING A BUTTERFLY GARDEN

 

INTRODUCTION

Now that your school has started up a vermicomposting program, your principal has been thinking about what you can do with all the fertilizer (castings) the worms are producing. One idea is to create a school butterfly/wildflower garden, which could be funded by the sales of bags of the worm castings. What would be some of the benefits of this type of project?

 

MATERIALS

grid paper

a ruler

a calculator (optional)

a geoboard (optional)

pattern blocks (optional)

TASK

Your principal has asked Grade 7 students to submit butterfly garden designs. With a partner, design a garden. Your design must include the following shapes:

 

three triangles

two parallelograms

two trapezoids

three complex shapes

 

Click on this link, Friends of the Rouge Watershed / Schools and Education / Ten Steps to a Wildflower/Butterfly Garden to learn more about butterfly gardens.

Find out:

 

Discuss with your partner some of the elements you would like to include in your garden. Visit some of the following web sites for inspiration.

 

BBC - Gardening - Design - Design Inspiration

Vaux le Vicomte in pictures

Garden Design uk

 

On a piece of grid paper, draw a scale diagram of your garden. Remember, your gaden can be any shape, so think creatively.

 

Create a table to display the area and perimeter of the shapes you included in your design.

 

Explain how you calculated the area of the complex shapes you included in your design.

 

Friends of the Rouge Valley suggest putting logs around the perimeter of your garden to keep the sand in your garden from blowing away. How many metres of logs would you need? Explain your thinking.

 

What would be the minimum area, measured in metres, of a square flowerbed planted with aggressive wildflowers and a square flowerbed planted with less aggressive wildflowers if you followed the plant spacing advice given at the FRW web site? Explain your thinking.

 

In writing, describe your design.