FLIGHT OF FANCY; BUTTERFLY LOVER KNOWS HOW TO ATTRACT COLORFUL CREATURES WITH MIX OF PLANTS.

Byline: Carol Bidwell Daily News Staff Writer

The houses are small and nondescript, the street quiet, just a block off bustling Van Nuys Boulevard. There's a tree here and there, an occasional rose bush or patch of daisies.

Then you drive around the corner ... and wham! A riot of color hits you in the eye. Your foot hits the brake instinctively as you slam to a stop to marvel at what can only be described as an urban jungle of greenery and flowers.

Purple iris. Red roses. Blue cornflowers. Pink watsonia. Cultivated species found in proper English gardens mingle with California native plants. Yellow and white wisteria tumble over the backyard fence like a living waterfall. Lavender trumpet vine drapes the garage door.

A feast for the human eye, true. But for a butterfly, it's home and dinner all in one.

Through Diane Gilbert's orderly but wild-appearing yard flit colorful butterflies, fat black bumblebees, busy honeybees and darting hummingbirds, while two contented cats - Gracie and Tootsie - watch over the lively domain.

``It's my oasis, my place to relax and be in nature,'' said Gilbert, a kindergarten teacher who began her garden a decade ago after a boyfriend gave her a dozen bare-root rose bushes.

And when she began teaching her students about the cycle of life, using butterflies as an example because even little kids aren't afraid of butterflies, she began to add more and more plants - cornflowers, sweet peas, verbena, milkweed, nasturtiums, dill, black-eyed Susans and dozens of others - that attract butterflies.

``They come and they go all summer,'' Gilbert said. ``It's just so calming to look at them. Everybody says, `Your garden must take so much work.' But it's not work, it's pleasure, being out here with the butterflies.''

With the flowers, a fish pond and several birdbaths filled with water, she aims to provide a gorgeous, ever-changing habitat for the rapidly disappearing urban butterflies, which entomologists say are dwindling because their natural breeding grounds are being paved over.

``We've built houses all over everything, taken out the plants that butterflies need,'' said Margaret Huffman of Pacific Palisades, president of the Los Angeles chapter of the North American Butterfly Association.

People who plant ``butterfly gardens'' filled with only bright, splashy flowers have good intentions in trying to attract the lively critters to their yards. But what they're really offering isn't a habitat that helps increase the butterfly population, but a butterfly buffet, a sort of all-you-can-eat luncheon stopover, Huffman said. The adults stop, sip some nectar, then head off to find native plants where they can lay their eggs; those eggs develop into caterpillars that feed on the plants until they metamorphose into butterflies.

Homeowners who like their yards just so are also unwittingly contributing to the dooming of the species because many of the plants caterpillars like to eat are considered weeds - and Southlanders hate to harbor a weed in their garden, Huffman said.

``When we take away all the plants that butterflies require, they die,'' Huffman said. ``What we have is a neatness complex, and it's very destructive.''

Gilbert has no such need for excessive tidiness and has a real fondness for native plants, some of which, she says, produce beautiful, delicate flowers. In both her front and back yards, milkweed is interspersed with lantana, cornflowers with coreopsis, verbena with sabiosa, providing both a habitat for caterpillars as well as a feeding ground for adult butterflies.

Huffman said other gardeners plant splashy flower gardens but reserve a small corner for native plants.

``You don't have to go ugly and drab with everything,'' she said. ``You could have a small area where you could have plants that have nectar for the adults to feed on, and an area for the caterpillars to feed on that's not quite as pretty.''

Some people who aren't pristine gardeners do tolerate patches of native plants, but ironically become irate when they realize the fat little critters are chomping away at their scanty garden.

``They say, `The caterpillars are eating my plants!' '' said Huffman with a laugh. ``We say, `That's what the plants are there for.' You see, everybody loves butterflies, but not everybody loves caterpillars.''

Gilbert loves both. She fingers the remains of a passion flower vine in her back yard that shows the equivalent of tiny caterpillar tooth marks.

``They eat it right down to the vine,'' Gilbert said. ``It's amazing how much they can eat. Every summer, I think the caterpillars have killed it, but every year I give it a good watering, and it comes right back - and so do the butterflies. The butterflies love passion flower vine.''

Passion flower is what Gilbert calls ``a sure thing.'' Plant it and they will come.

There are lots of those kinds of plants in her yard: milkweed, verbena, sweet peas, mint, parsley, cornflower, Queen Anne's lace, nasturtium, carrots and dill for caterpillar food, plus so-called nectar plants for the adults to feed on, including wisteria, butterfly bush, forget-me-not, chives, cornflowers, honeysuckle, trumpet vine, lantana, cosmos, iris, salvia, sage, hibiscus and lilies.

Huffman said caterpillars also like to feed on monkey flowers, mallows, thistle and wild lilacs, and even sycamore and oak trees.

Fledgling butterfly gardeners shouldn't be disappointed if they plant the recommended flowers and native plants but don't hear the flutter of tiny wings immediately. Butterflies have good radar, but it's hard for them to single out one yard in an entire community.

``If you don't have any natural areas nearby, then it's going to take a while for the butterflies to come by,'' Huffman said. ``But if you're near a natural area, there's a good chance of getting some butterflies into your yard. You just have to plant and wait.''

Get some help on going native

There are a handful of Southern California nurseries that specialize in native plants that attract egg-laying butterflies.

Matilija Nursery, 8225 Waters Road, Moorpark; [phone]. Owner Bob Sussman says the nursery specializes in buckwheats, bush sunflowers and other native plants. Call for directions and hours.

Theodore Payne Foundation for California Native Plants and Wildflowers, 10459 Tuxford St., Sun Valley; [phone]. Call for nursery hours.

Tree of Life, 33201 Ortega Highway, San Juan Capistrano; [phone]. Co-owner Mike Evans said the wholesale nursery welcomes retail customers 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Fridays. Call for special public opening days.

Even lazy gardeners can entice butterflies with IFG Seed Roll Inc.'s new product, the Butterfly Garden Roll, a 5-foot-by-9-inch strip of garden ready-made for planting. The roll sandwiches seeds of bright-colored nectar-bearing flowers between two layers of wood fiber that acts as mulch. To plant, a gardener needs only to rough up the soil a bit, remove weeds, cut a piece of the roll to fit a planter box or flower bed, set it in place and water. Seeds come up in one to two weeks, said company spokesman Doug Snyder. The roll sells for about $8 and can be ordered directly from the company by calling [phone].

Want to learn more about how to entice butterflies into your garden? Check out these sources:

``Creating a Butterfly Garden'' (Fireside Press; $8.95).

``The Butterfly Garden'' (The Harvard Common Press; $10.95).

``The Butterfly Alphabet'' (Scholastic Press; $15.95) may not teach you how to attract butterflies, but in it you'll see the fascinating results of author/photographer Kjell B. Sandved's decades-long quest to photograph many varieties of butterfly. What he found was that the markings on their wings are unique; he's found all the letters of the alphabet, numbers, figures and even funny faces.

- Carol Bidwell

Setting hearts aflutter 

Visitors to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County will be able to hear the whir of tiny wings all summer at a giant butterfly pavilion that's part of a new butterfly exhibit.

The Pavilion of Wings, an outdoor, enclosed area on the museum's south lawn will be open May 2 through Sept. 6, featuring more than 200 colorful, free-flying butterflies in a natural environment. The best viewing times, say museum officials, are between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., or when the sun is at its peak. Admission to this special outdoor exhibit is $3 for adults, $2 for students and seniors, and $1 for children.

Inside the museum, you'll find ``Butterflies in Living Color,'' an indoor exhibit featuring hundreds of preserved exotic and local butterflies and moths from the museum's entomology collection; this exhibit will be open May 29 through Sept. 6. Highlights include a simulated field camp in a tropical rain forest, where visitors learn about insect research. Museum admission is $8 for adults, $5.50 for seniors and students, $2 for children age 5-12.

Butterfly classes also have been scheduled as part of the attraction. They include:

Butterfly Gardening: A Natural Attraction, 1 to 4 p.m. June 27; $25 for museum members, $29 for nonmembers. Margaret Huffman, president of the Los Angeles Chapter of the North American Butterfly Association, will teach gardeners how to bring butterflies back to their communities. Reservation advised; call [phone].

Blossoms and Butterflies, 1 to 4 p.m. July 10 in the museum Discovery Center; free with museum admission. Experts from the Rancho Santa Ana Botanical Garden will explain how to use native flowers to attract butterflies. No reservations required.

Butterflies of Greater Los Angeles, 2 p.m. July 24 in the museum's Delacour Auditorium; $9 for adults, $5 for students, $7 for museum members. Entomologist Rudi Mattoni will speak on endangered butterflies. Reservation advised; call [phone].

The museum, at 900 Exposition Blvd. in downtown's Exposition Park, is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. For more information, call [phone].

- Carol Bidwell

CAPTION(S):

8 Photos, 2 Boxes

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) FLYING COLORS

Attract butterflies by choosing the right plants for your garden (Western Tiger Swallowtail)

Photo by Margaret Huffman

(2--Color) Western Tiger Swallowtail

(3--Color) Painted Lady

(4--Color) Gulf Fritillary

(5--Color) Monarch

(6--Color) Van Nuys schoolteacher Diane Gilbert nurtures a mixture of cultivated species and California native plants to help butterflies breed and thrive.

Charlotte Schmid-Maybach/Special to the Daily News

(7) From Kjell B. Sandved's ``The Butterfly Alphabet''

(8) Visitors to the Natural History Museum's Pavilion of Wings can see more than 200 free-flying butterflies in a natural environment.

Box: (1) Setting hearts aflutter (See text)

(2) Get some help on going native (See text)