How to Create a Butterfly Garden
If you too love watching butterflies and would like to create a garden to attract them, here are some tips designed to start the creative process and get you started on creating your first butterfly garden.
1. Choose a location that provides at least six hours of sunlight everyday. Butterflies are cold-blooded and will not be attracted to an area where they will not be warm and sheltered.
2. Design your garden so that it has plenty of protection from the wind. Wind is the butterfly's worst enemy and can cause a butterfly serious harm. Some ways to help protect your butterfly garden from the wind is to plant shrubs and other plants in strategic places to create wind breaks. However, if you can find a location that has no heavy winds at all that is good. If you are fortunate enough to have an area of your home that gets the right amount of sunlight, and has wind breaks on both the west and east sides, or wherever the winds come from in your area, that is even better.
3. Plant flowers that are nectar producing such as goldenrod, honeysuckle, lillies and petunias to name a few. Butterflies search for flowers that provide the sugary nectar they like to eat, and so planting these types of flowers in your garden will attract them.
4. When you're designing your butterfly garden, also include host plants for caterpillars such as violets, pansies, clover, and wild licorice to name a few. This will attract female butterflies to come and lay their eggs in your garden.
5. Place flat stones around your butterfly garden. Butterflies like to sit on stones and sun themselves so they can raise their body temperature and stay active.
6. Butterflies are around and active from early Spring to late Fall, so plan your garden in such a way that there are always flowers in bloom during this time frame. This way you won't have a situation where the flowers you planted stop blooming and the butterflies leave because there is no nectar for them.
7. Create damp areas and shallow bodies of water in your butterfly garden. Butterflies are not able to drink from an open pool, but they can drink from a shallow puddle. Also, male butterflies like to hang out in shallow puddles.
Applying these simple steps to your garden will have you attracting butterflies in no time.
Published by Regina Paul
Regina Paul is a freelance writer, editor, cover artist, and author. She edits professionally for two publishers. She has over 800 articles published online, and has published twelve books both fiction and n... View profile
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- How to Build a Butterfly Garden in 5 Steps
- How to Create Your Own Butterfly Garden
- How to Design a Butterfly Garden with Specific Butterflies in Mind
- Garden Ideas: How to Create a Butterfly Garden
- Planning a Butterfly Garden
- How to Attract Butterflies in the City in St. Paul or Minneapolis, MN (or Anywhere)
- Flowers that Attract Butterflies
- Winds are a butterflies worst enemy.
- Planting clovers and pansies will draw female butterflies to come and lay their eggs in your garden.
- Male butterflies like to hang out in shallow puddles.