Inviting Butterflies to Your Garden

Birds, butterflies and other wildlife visiting your garden can make your landscape that much more charming. Who doesn't smile at the sight of a butterfly or hummingbird enjoying a flight through the yard? There are some easy things you can do to invite the butterflies to flutter into your yard and garden.

Provide adequate sunlight to your butterfly garden. Even if you are not planting an entire bed of flowers to attracting butterflies, make sure that any plants or landscape changes you make to attract fluttering friends to your garden are in bright locations. Butterflies are a cold blooded insect, which means that they need warmth and sunlight to keep their wing muscles warm and moving.

Like every other living creature, butterflies need water. However, butterflies cannot drink from open water. Available mud or wet earth or sand is the best sources of water for butterflies. To provide drinkable water to butterflies, I suggest sinking a bucket of mud into the ground near the pants that butterflies enjoy. Do not forget to place a few sticks on top of the mud, allowing the butterflies to perch as they drink.

Another basic need that butterflies share with all living creatures is shelter. A calm, quiet area to feed in, and fly in is best for butterflies. If you can provide some shelter from rain and wind then your butterflies will stay longer and feel right at home.

Young butterflies eat food, rather than just the nectar that mature butterflies feed on. Favorite food sources include elm, blood flower, milkweed, wild cherry, passion flower and fennel.

Mature butterflies need nectar, and find their favorite flowers by color. They are most attracted to bright colors like red, purple, yellow and orange. The flowers need to provide butterflies with a place to perch as the butterfly collects nectar. It is easiest for them to collect from simple flowers, so try to avoid double flower varieties. Some favorite plants include butterfly bush, verbena, azaleas, Mexican sunflowers, yellow cosmos and New England asters.

Butterflies are most likely to be seen from spring through early fall, so plan your garden accordingly. Try to plant flowers in such a way that there are blooms available to visiting butterflies throughout the growing season. If all else fails, some butterfly species will make use of rotting fruit, sugar water, honey or stale beer if there are no flowers available when they flutter through your space.