BUTTERFLY GARDEN

and MICROSOFT POLLINATOR PATIO

ABOUT THE ExHIBIT

Butterfly Garden

Closed for 2025

We look forward to reopening again in the future to welcome you to this beautiful garden where native North American butterflies fly around you!

Microsoft Pollinator Patio

Open year-round

Want to attract beautiful butterflies and other pollinators to your own backyard? This garden is full of ideas and actions you can take on behalf of native pollinators such as hummingbirds, beetles, bees and flies. Before you leave, take a sneak peek at the zoo’s Silverspot Butterfly Lab where zookeepers and teen volunteers hatch and raise endangered Oregon silverspot butterflies for release into protected wild habitat.

Pollinator Toolkit

An informational flyer from Woodland Park Zoo titled Care and Maintenance of Your Backyard Pollinators lists five ways to support bees and pollinators, including planting flowers, mowing less, and providing shelter.

Care and Maintenance of Your Backyard Pollinators

An informational flyer from Woodland Park Zoo titled “Finding the Right Plant for the Right Place” with gardening tips, a plant label example, and a list of factors to consider when choosing plants, such as light and water needs.

Finding the Right Plant for the Right Place

An instructional flyer from Woodland Park Zoo titled “How to Make a Simple Seed Ball,” featuring step-by-step directions, an image of a hand holding a small seed ball, and information on how seed balls help plants grow.

How to Make a Simple Seed Ball

Informational poster titled The Real Dirt About Soil, describing soil components: organic material, mulch, compaction, chemicals, moisture, with related photos and gardening tips, plus logos for Cedar Grove and Party for the Planet.

The Real Dirt About Soil

I Am Living Northwest

Pro-pollinator? Join the movement of people like you who care about local wildlife.

Get more pollinator actions tips and inspiration

Selecting Plants for Pollinators

A Regional Guide for Farmers, Land Managers, and Gardeners in the ecological region of the Pacific Lowland Mixed Forest Province.

This regional guide is just one in a series of plant selection tools designed to provide information on how individuals can influence pollinator populations through choices they make when they farm a plot of ground, manage large tracts of public land, or plant a garden.

Read the guide

RESOURCES

Saving Northwest Butterflies

Giving endangered butterflies a headstart before releasing into protected Northwest coastal grasslands.

Find out more

A wooden bee house with rows of small holes is mounted on a wooden post outdoors, with blurred foliage in the background.

Bee House Tips

A black and blue butterfly with white spots rests on a green, serrated leaf. Its wings are spread open, displaying a gradient from black to vibrant blue.

About Pesticides