In 2024, the Education and Information Centre White Carpathians continued the Apollo Project and its related education and awareness activities.
This year we created 6 new gardens for Apollo in our White Carpathians functional area, usually in the form of a raised bed. The beds were seeded with nectarous plants favoured by the adult Apollo, i.e. various pink and purple flowering plants. The sown mixture has also been enriched with other flowers that attract other species of butterflies or insects. The bed also includes a rockery with host plants for caterpillars. In the White Carpathians, these are mainly the large stonecrop, which occurs naturally here. In addition, the white stonecrop is another important host plant for the caterpillars of the Apollo’s caterpillar.
Most Gardens for Apollo are created in collaboration with schools and kindergartens, or community gardens for example, and are preceded by an educational part in which the pupils are introduced to butterflies in general and then, of course, to the Apollo. Pupils love playing caterpillars, which then become pupae. We use our five metre long pupa, which resembles a real Apollo’s pupa, and the caterpillars (the pupils) climb into it and fall asleep. After one of nature’s miracles, the metamorphosis, has taken place in the chrysalis, the pupils become adult butterflies and fly out of the pupa. Another popular activity is the preparation of a sweet liquid as close as possible to the nectar found in the flowers of plants, the only food for adult butterflies. This is followed by a tasting, of course. After all, the students are adult butterflies for the rest of the programme!
This is followed by the completion of the raised bed in the school garden. The pupils enthusiastically set about tidying up the prepared raised bed and creating a rock garden with their own stones. In order to make the students feel more connected to the bed, most of the stones for the rock garden are found in nature and brought in by the students themselves, sometimes painted with different motifs, especially butterflies. Once the raised bed is ready, they sow the flower mixture and plant the stonecrops.
Awareness was also raised at other events. At the beginning of the year, the traditional seminar dedicated to our functional area was held, where around 60 participants from the Czech and Slovak Republics listened with interest to the presentation on the project. In the spring, our organisation hosted officials from the South Moravian Region. Like the students from Slovenia, they visited our breeding station and learned a lot of interesting information not only about the Apollo, but also about the importance of nature conservation in general. At another awareness-raising event in the House of Nature of the White Carpathians, the visitors also learned about the Apollo, and especially the younger ones were able to draw a picture of a Apollo, get a tattoo of a Apollo or take away a memory game with animal species that live in similar habitats to the Apollo. A lecture for senior citizens from the White Carpathian region was very well attended, presenting the Apollo, its life cycle and the habitats it inhabits.
The LIFE Apollo2020 project is proof that collaboration between experts, schools and the community can deliver concrete conservation results. Through these gardens, we are not only helping to conserve the Apollo (and other species with similar requirements), but also educating and inspiring the next generation to care for our natural world.
