About Us

We are Tom and Mia, founders of the Butterfly Sanctuary.  Although we no longer have the nature trail, we still have a small garden and we are still very active in the butterfly world and enjoy helping others learn as much as they can about butterflies and gardening.  We have since developed many programs, such as classes, seminars, and presentations to educate the public and help others.

We started out with an interest in butterflies and gardening when we were children.  In 1996, we decided to build a butterfly garden as a conservation effort. The first year was a year of watching-most butterflies were already here or passed through at one point or another during the year. Then we started fairly extensive nature journals, which we still refer to when we have a question about a certain species.

The garden was expanded many times, and our passion turned to a full time endeavor.  In 1998, we formed a non-profit organization, and began showing our gardens and habitat to the public on a limited basis.  We felt that we had to educate the public about the serious problems with the environment and also to teach everyone how to enjoy these great indicators of habitat health.

The Butterfly Sanctuary is a family-run operation.  We are an artistic family with an inclination toward nature.  Tropical Tommy is a popular local musician and adventurer, Mia is a realistic nature artist and craftsperson. Although our children no longer reside with us, they keep the spirit of butterflies in their hearts.  Daughter Jackie makes crafts, daughter Julie is an artist, poetess, and writer and son Jason is a writer. 

We are located in Southwest Florida so our butterflies are here all year.  In this part of Florida, there are permanent over wintering colonies of Monarchs, Zebra Longwings, Queens and Sulfurs, to name a few, with many other species still coming to us from nearby destroyed habitats, even in our new location, about 8 miles south of the original location.  The Butterfly Sanctuary is still a kind of Refugee Camp for butterflies, although on a much smaller scale than it once was.  We are learning more every day about butterfly behavior and their close relationship to native plants. 

In the future, we plan to find more land, either in SW Florida or in Costa Rica and have our weather station set up so we can see the correlation between butterfly emergence, nectaring and weather.  We are also studying Heliconian butterfly behavior because of the societies formed by the Zebra Longwings. Our project to gather drought resistant native wildflower seeds and grow them in bare spots to see how they withstand the dry winter and spring has not been forgotten.   We are still using all kinds of watering methods to see which ones conserve best.

Natural enemies for butterflies include fire ants, spiders, dragonflies, wasps, bees, birds, and snakes, as well as unseen bacterial and fungus infections proliferated by our short South Florida cold spells.  Besides all this, our butterflies suffer loss of numbers because of new construction (which kills their larval host plants and favorite nectar plants), mosquito spraying because of greater numbers of people living here, and modern plant nursery control methods.

We continue to present programs, and we have helped many groups, schools, developments and other organizations build their own butterfly garden.  We can help you, too; many times we offer our services for free or a nominal fee, especially for non-profit institutions.

We can be contacted by email, or by telephone at (239) 417-9456 in Naples, Florida .  You may also contact us by completing the following form.  We always welcome questions or comments and will do our best to answer any questions you may have.   We will post some of your questions along with the answer here on our web site on a regular basis, so come back often.  Your question, along with a response, may be posted!  In any case, we will always reply to you via telephone or email.

PRIVACY NOTICE : We will NEVER divulge or give any information you give us to any party, for any reason!

Thank you very much. We will respond to your request as soon as possible.