Attracting Butterflies To Your Garden

PHOTO INFO: Butterfly On Pink Flower

Want beautiful butterflies in your garden? Make your garden butterfly friendly.

Butterfly gardening is growing flowers and plants to attract colorful beautiful butterflies to your garden.The design of your butterfly garden is your personal preference.

First consider the size of your garden and which flowers and plants you want to grow, make sure the butterflies will like them too. It is important to find out which plants and flowers will attract the species of butterflies that live in your area. This information can be found at your local library.

Butterflies will come to your garden if you make sure your garden fill the needs of the butterflies and their larva.

PHOTO: Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly

Information to attract those beautiful butterflies to your garden!

Sunlight

Put your butterfly garden in a sunny location. This will warm a butterflies wing muscles allowing them to fly. Remember butterflies are cold blooded insects....keep them warm.

Sheltered Areas

Make sure your butterfly garden is in a quiet place, offer some
butterfly houses and shelter from strong winds, rain and your cats.

Butterflies and Water

I know that some information you look up about butterflies and water might differ. I have read about bird feeders to supply water to butterflies that is "good enough". Wrong!! I found out a butterfly can't drink from an open water source.

To make sure the butterflies can get water from your garden you must have some kind of wet mud, earth or sand. Find a container you can sink into the ground, fill with mud and add some kind of twig or rocks for them to perch on.

Butterfly Food Plants

For butterfly larva to eat, they need plants that include elm, fennel, blood flower, passion flower, milkweed, senna and wild cherry. So if you want a butterfly garden....make sure the larva survive.

Butterfly Nectar Plants

I learned that there is conflicting information about this also. I will try to clear this up for you. Some research indicates that colors don't matter but they do. Butterflies are attracted to "hot" colors. Include hot colors in your garden like Yellow, orange, red and purple.


Butterfly nectar plants that are best for your butterfly garden will be azaleas, butterfly bushes, Mexican sunflowers, New England aster, verbena and lovely yellow cosmos.

Some butterflies will will eat rotting fruits, stale beer and sugar or honey water.

When providing butterflies with flowers, make sure they have some kind of platform to perch on while they are extracting the nectar with their proboscis. Simple flowers are best for this.

Try to supply, from Spring to Fall, some kind of flowers that have a "succession" of blooms for the entire season.

Butterfly Stepping Stone

The Butterfly Stepping Stone features quality craftsmanship and will put the finishing touches on your garden decor. Butterflies gather to create this lovely stepper. There is also a charming verse sculpted into the center. A perfect gift for any gardener! It can also hang on any wall as an accent. For a fun craft idea you can paint it! Get out your paints, brushes, stepping stones, get creative and have fun!

Sunblossom Butterfly Mobile