Richness and abundance of both butterflies and floral resources in residential gardens across southwestern Melbourne, Australia's greater metropolitan area

Wildlife gardening is a popular activity undertaken within residential areas. It is broadly promoted as a means of encouraging residents to make their gardens more 'wildlife friendly'. While theory and anecdotal evidence suggest these schemes should be effective, quantitative evaluation of wildlife gardening practices and programs is lacking across most taxa they target. Our overall objective in collecting this data was to determine if there was a difference in butterfly richness or abundance between gardens managed and not managed to benefit wildlife. To test this, the data were collected at two spatial scales: landscape level representing our 500x500 m sampling cells and garden level representing our wildlife and traditional residential gardens. At the landscape level, butterfly and floral data were collected along a 1-km long Pollard walk through the sampling cell. At the garden level we conducted point counts for butterflies in residential gardens participating in a wildlife gardening program and compared them to non-participating control gardens within the same sampling cell and from areas not targeted by the gardening program. At both levels we counted floral resources and calculated tree cover (%) within the surrounding landscape as both are important potential resources for butterflies within the landscape. The amount (%) of impervious surface cover within the entire sampling cell and within the landscape surrounding each garden was also measured as it is known to have a negative effect on the butterfly community