Butterflies are back and better than ever at the Desert Botanical Garden, with its new 3,200-square foot-Butterfly Exhibit located on the Harriet K. Maxwell Desert Wildflower Loop Trail, which opened last month.

Mother and daughter Anna and Sophia enjoy their up-close experience with a variety of winged beauties at the new Desert Botanical Garden Butterfly Pavilion (submitted photo).

The new exhibit features hundreds of live fluttering butterflies among the desert landscapes, as well as a caterpillar nursery and emergence chamber. The Butterfly Pavilion will provide visitors an opportunity for up-close interaction with butterflies while learning about their role as pollinators, characteristics of their lifecycles, and our conservation efforts to protect them.

The garden’s first butterfly pavilion opened in 2002 and was a great success with visitors, operating for more than 12 years. “When it was time to ‘retire’ that exhibit, we knew that we wanted to replace it with a permanent facility that was even more special – one that incorporated all phases of a butterfly’s life cycle and one that was architecturally consistent with the rest of the Garden’s unique structures,” says Ken Schutz, executive director of the garden.

Desert Botanical Garden is located at 1201 N. Galvin Parkway. Admission is

$24.95 for adults, and $12.95 for children ages 3-17. For more information, call 480-941-1225 or visit www.dbg.org.