'Butterflies & Blooms' Opens Today At Conservatory Of FlowersPhoto: Stephanie Versin
Camden Avery
Published on November 17, 2016

If you're starting to line up your weekend plans in and around the Upper Haight, you might want to head over to the Conservatory of Flowers for the "Butterflies and Blooms" exhibition, which opens today.

The show, which conservatory spokesperson Nina Sazevich calls "an immersive living butterfly exhibit," will run through June 30, 2017. It last appeared at the conservatory three years ago.

For this exhibition, "we transform one of the galleries in our lovely Victorian-era greenhouse into a colorful cottage garden where visitors young and old alike can have a very up close experience with these winged beauties," Sazevich said.

Admission is $6 for adult San Francisco residents, $2-3 for children, and $8 for non-residents. And for an extra $20 donation, which benefits conservatory school programs, you can be guided through the process of releasing newly-emerged butterflies from their chrysalises into the exhibition.

Chrysalises will hang in the Butterfly Bungalow, waiting to hatch. | Photo: Stephanie Versin

"Butterflies and Blooms is a unique opportunity to walk among a wide variety of brightly colored daisies, sunflowers, zinnias, and more while free-flying butterflies flit from flower to flower, drinking nectar and getting covered in pollen," Sazevich said. "These goodwill ambassadors of the insect world provide a fascinating demonstration of plant pollination in action."

The exhibition will run Tuesdays through Sundays, from 10am to close, through the end of June.