- Welcome to the Botanical Garden of the Ozarks.

We're here in Northwest Arkansas, between Fayetteville and Springdale.

I'm Roslyn Imrie.

I'm the education director here.

We have the only butterfly house in all of Arkansas.

Would you like to come see it?

I'm gonna run by the insectary.

I'll meet you there!

(bright upbeat music) You beat me to it!

Well, come on!

Come on inside and we'll see what we can find.

Maybe we can find all four stages of a butterfly's life cycle.

In the butterfly house, we stay on the path and we don't touch anything because butterflies go through four distinct stages and they're very delicate at each stage.

- [Woman] What are the four stages of a butterfly?

- [Roslyn] First stage is the caterpillar.

Caterpillars are very small.

And they take about two weeks to hatch.

Once they finally hatch, they hatch a very, very tiny caterpillar.

That's almost too small to find and see.

This caterpillar is very hungry and it eats and eats and eats, growing bigger and bigger all the time.

After about two weeks of eating, it's a big fat caterpillar.

After it's had its fill, it finally finds a safe place to make a chrysalis.

This is a monarch butterfly chrysalis.

The monarch butterfly chrysalis gets its name from that golden crown along the top.

It looks like royalty, like a monarch.

This is where the caterpillar creates a chrysalis and changes completely into a butterfly.

It takes about two weeks, more or less for this amazing change to happen.

Its entire body changes and it emerges as a butterfly.

(bright upbeat music continues) - [Woman] What role do butterflies play in our ecosystem?

(bright upbeat music continues) - Pollination and gardening is super important for nature.

About a third of the food we eat, we can thank a pollinator for it.

Do you like fruit?

I like fruit.

Well, all the fruit that you eat, you need a pollinator for it.

Because fruit comes from a flower and to get the flower to change into a fruit, a pollinator has to come and take the pollen from one flower to another.

A lot of people think of bees for this, but there are a lot of pollinators out there.

Did you know that wasps, and flies, some beetles, and even bats are pollinators?

Well, butterflies are pollinators too.

And they're one of my favorites.

Because not only are they pollinators, but they feed the birds and they're beautiful.

(bright upbeat music continues) - [Woman] What do caterpillars eat?

(bright upbeat music continues) - [Roslyn] As it's eating, it only eats its host plant.

There's no other plant in the world that it can eat.

So we have to make sure we plant the right types of host plants for the right types of butterflies and caterpillars.

(bright upbeat music continues) - [Woman] What do butterflies eat?

(bright upbeat music continues) - [Roslyn] As a butterfly, it needs nectar.

And so, you have to make sure you have the right types of nectar plants for it to eat.

They're a lot less picky as butterflies.

They can go to a lot of different flowers.

They like flowers with big open petals like the coneflower.

Coneflowers or Echinacea is one of the favorite flowers of a butterfly.

- [Woman] What type of plants can I grow in my own garden for butterflies?

(bright upbeat music continues) - To help the butterflies, you need two types of plants.

First, you need the host plant, and then the nectar plant.

Milkweed is a great plant to start with because it is a host plant for the monarch caterpillars.

It also has these lovely flowers, which the adult monarch will nectar upon.

Another plant you need to think of when you're gardening for butterflies is your nectar plants.

These are some great nectar plants.

These are Zinnias.

Zinnias are super easy to grow from seed and you can find them just about at any store.

And look at all the beautiful colors they come in.

Butterflies love them.

Come visit me at the butterfly house here at the Botanical Garden of the Ozarks, and see if you can find every stage of a butterfly's life cycle for yourself.

(bright upbeat music continues)