Butterfly Garden Tips

What is butterfly gardening?

Simply put, butterfly gardening is all about growing flowers and plants that will attract these amazing creatures to your garden.

Thrill your family and visitors with a garden filled with beautiful, colorful, and intriguing butterflies. Kids (and adults) are captivated when these delicate bits of beauty land on their arms… or noses!

Although the specific design of butterfly gardens is really a matter of personal preference, each design must take these points into consideration:

1. The size of your garden
2. Varieties of flowers and plants that are known to attract butterflies (preferably, they should be native to your area)
3. Which of these varieties do YOU enjoy and want in your butterfly garden.

In a nutshell… pick a style of garden that suits the size of your butterfly garden and that appeals to you, but also be sure it contains plants and flowers that appeal to the butterflies you wish to attract.

It is important to find out which plants and flowers will attract the species of butterflies that live in your area. This information can usually be found at the local library.

In the meantime, here’s a tip… butterflies are attracted to those flowers that produce nectar rather than pollen. Any of these plants will work… honeysuckle, milkweed, summer lilac, Valerian, daisies, Purple Coneflower, Yellow Sage, day lilies and lavender.

To create the kind of environment that seriously attracts butterflies, you also need to supply them with water. A birdbath will look attractive and keep the butterflies up off the ground, away from stray cats or mischievous puppies. But, a shallow dish on a post or hung in a tree will do just as well.

However… even though butterflies do not necessarily care about color, you don’t want your garden to be a hodgepodge of unrelated, uncoordinated colors and textures. You might try this…

You might find it helpful to draw and color a layout of your butterfly gardening plan to see what the finished product would look like. Keep in mind that warm colors like red and orange are flashy and showy (and some insist that butterflies prefer them). These colors have a greater impact against a strong green background. Cool colors such as blue and purple are soothing and toned down and would work better with a white contrast, to create the look of freshness and brightness.

So… just make sure to include plants that are known to attract butterflies (especially nectar producing plants), and a water source. Fortunately, most gardeners discover that butterfly gardens include most of their favorite varieties of plants. In fact, just adding a few select plants to an existing garden can transform it into a lovely BUTTERFLY garden.

Pretty much a win-win deal… don’t you agree?