My name is Ricky. I'm currently twenty six years old and I have been interested in animals since a young age, developing a specific interest in butterflies when I was about five years old. Funnily enough, the interest developed when I had borrowed some books from my local library about the English countryside: One page had three or four pictures of British butterflies, and I remember returning to the library later that day to borrow some books specifically on butterflies.
Upon returning home, I ran straight out into the garden (as it was one of those rare, hot sunny English days) and started searching for butterflies, trying to identify any that visited the garden with the book I had borrowed. It was from here that I found myself hooked!
In the years since, I started rearing caterpillars that I would find out and about from larval to adult stage, before releasing them, and in 1997 at the age of twelve, I decided that I wanted my very own greenhouse from which to breed butterflies. For the next few years, I was successfully breeding a number of British species, from Meadow Browns and Orange Tips to Brimstones and Small Tortoiseshells. It was highly enjoyable, and added a level of complexity that I found both stimulating and rewarding.
I found that in the few years spent breeding British butterflies I learnt a lot both about the species of butterflies I was breeding and about plants - a very important sub-topic to the butterfly breeder!
In 2004 at the age of 18 we went on a family holiday to Cornwall, and as part of that trip we visited the Eden Project. I found myself mesmerised inside the giant tropical biome, and wished I could recreate it on a smaller scale. In the gift shop, I browsed the books that they had for sale, and one caught my eye: The Living Tropical Greenhouse by John and Maureen Tampion. That single book has provided me with the inspiration and the information that I needed to start venturing into the realm of breeding tropical species and cultivating tropical plants. I haven't looked back since!
