Monteverde Butterfly Garden
The Monteverde Butterfly Garden, or Mariposario, is one of the area’s original and most visited attractions. Situated in Cerro Plano, between the town of Santa Elena and the Monteverde Reserve, the Mariposario offers a biodiversity center, medicinal plant garden, live leaf cutter ant colony, in addition to four climate-controlled butterfly gardens where visitors can observe some of the most beautiful and fascinating insects in the Tropics.
The garden was founded in 1989 by biologist Jim Wolfe and his wife Marta Iris with the aim of inspiring and education visitors about the vast array of butterflies and insects native to Costa Rica. Jim and Marta have been hand-raising butterflies and other insects for the past sixteen years and have a wealth of experience and knowledge about these fragile creatures. All the butterflies in the garden are bred on the premises, unlike most gardens which buy in their chrysalides.
The Monteverde Butterfly Garden believes in hands-on education. The biodiversity center displays a variety of insects and arachnids local to Moneteverde, many of them live, allowing visitors and up-close and personal experience, as well as information about breeding, feeding and habitats, live bug cams, and a case for viewing butterflies as they emerge from their chrysalides.
Each of the four butterfly gardens represents a different Costa Rican habitat according to temperature, altitude and vegetation, ranging from hot lowlands to mid-elevation forest-edge to higher altitude cloud forest. The gardens contain more than fifty species in total, including the unique Calico butterfly, the only butterfly in the world to produce sound; the stunning Blue Morpho seen all over Monteverde, as well as transparent and barely visible Glass-Wings and unusual striped Zebra-Wings.
The medicinal plant garden is a self-guided tour of more than seventy plants used medicinally throughout the world. An information sheet lists their many different and often surprising uses.
The final, and perhaps most fascinating exhibit, is the Leaf Cutter Ant Colony, displayed under glass allowing visitors to see the ants carrying leaves along a warren of trails to their nest; here they are cultivating a fungus from the decomposing vegetation that they will use to feed on later.
All visitors to the garden will receive a tour lasting approximately one hour and thirty minutes, led in English or Spanish by educated, well-trained volunteers, often biology students. The tour is informative and often very entertaining, actually more like a mini-course in tropical entomology and Costa Rican natural history! As well as learning about butterflies visitors will discover why cockroaches are actually great neighbours and how jewel scarab beetles can distort light waves. There are plenty of opportunities to take detailed photographs of the exhibits. At the end of the tour visitors may watch a twenty minute video, part of Jim Wolfe’s thirty six chapter DVD collection entitled ‘The Insects of Costa Rica’.
The garden is open 365 days a year, from 9.30am to 4.00pm. The gardens are weather-proofed but butterflies are most active when it is sunny so the best time to come and watch them is between 10am and 3pm.
Costs are: $9 for adults, $7 for students, $3 for kids and $5 for Costa Rican nationals. All proceeds go towards maintaining the gardens and exhibits. For more information or to make reservations, please email butterflygarden@monteverdeinfo.com .
The Monteverde Butterfly Garden runs a year-round volunteer program. Volunteers must commit to stay a minimum of two months and are expected to work up to four hours a day, six days a week. Volunteers will be trained to lead tours as well as work on reception and perform general maintenance tasks. During tours they will normally be expected to handle the insects and express enthusiasm for their subject – this is not a job for arachnophobes!
Accommodation is provided on site. Lunch is prepared by employees, breakfast and evening meals are volunteers’ responsibility. Volunteers have access to a communal kitchen. For further information about volunteer opportunities email mariposamonteverde@yahoo.com .
