How to Create a Butterfly Garden By: Kathy Anderson
People who love to garden also tend to enjoy watching butterflies flitting about.
After all, butterflies are just as pretty to look at as the flowers that they visit. Gardeners can entice even more butterflies to visit their gardens by creating gardens specifically for butterflies.
It’s quite easy to create a butterfly garden. You may even find that you already grow some flowers that attract butterflies. With just a little effort you can create a beautiful haven for these lovely winged creatures, and the butterflies will appreciate your efforts.
If you’re starting from scratch and will be creating a new planting bed for your butterfly garden, you’ll first want to learn how to properly create a planting bed for your plants. You can find information on preparing raised planting beds at freeplants.com
When deciding where to locate your butterfly garden, choose a spot that is not isolated from other plants. Butterflies will be more likely to find your garden if there are other flowers nearby to lead them to your butterfly garden. But if your butterfly garden is the only patch of flowers in a vast sea of grass, butterflies won’t have much reason to be in the area. If you have a border of flowering shrubs and other butterfly-enticing plants are scattered around your yard, the butterflies are much more likely to spend time in your garden.
The butterfly garden should include a variety of plants that attract butterflies, and those plants should be in a variety of colors and heights. Consider planting azaleas, rhododendrons and lilacs for height. Fragrant ‘James McFarland’ lilacs seem to be especially attractive to butterflies. Weigela, with its flowers like dainty trumpets, is another good shrub for attracting butterflies.
No butterfly garden should be without Butterfly Milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa). Not only will the bright orange blossoms attract many butterflies, but the plant will also provide food for caterpillars. Without the caterpillars there would be no butterflies. Dill and parsley also provide food for butterfly caterpillars. If you’re lucky, you may even have Monarch butterflies laying their eggs on the milkweed and you can watch the entire life cycle, from caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly.
Many other commonly grown flowers will attract butterflies, including hollyhocks, purple coneflowers (Echinacea), Black-eyed Susans (rudbeckia), cosmos, huechera, zinnias, beebalm and cleome. Buddleia, also known as butterfly bush, is a must in any butterfly garden. If you have room for this large plant, Mexican sunflower (tithonia) will attract many butterflies and hummingbirds with its sunny orange blooms.
Plan your butterfly garden so there are blooms all season long. The rhododendrons, azaleas and lilacs will provide a spring snack for butterflies, followed by summer-blooming plants such as the buddleia and asclepias. In the fall, butterflies will sip nectar from asters and ‘Autumn Joy” sedum.
In addition to providing food for butterflies, your butterfly garden should also provide a resting place along with shelter from the wind and cold. Include flat rocks in your garden where the butterflies can sun themselves. It’s even better if the rocks have shallow depressions where water will puddle and provide a place for butterflies to gather for a drink.
A small log pile will provide shelter from the weather for butterflies. You can also purchase butterfly shelters that look rather like tall, narrow birdhouses with several slots for entrances. These may attract butterflies, but in my experience wasps tend to move in, discouraging any butterflies from entering.
One final thing that every butterfly garden should include is a comfortable bench placed where you can sit and admire the beautiful butterflies. After all, you’ve created this garden not only for the butterflies but also for your own enjoyment.
Kathy Anderson has been an avid gardener for many years and has grown tomatoes by the acre, along with many other vegetables, flowers and landscape plants. Article provided by http://gardening-articles.com.
Backyard Butterfly Gardening Made Easy By: Faisal Diab
What are the implications of Butterfly Gardening?
It is basically the method of cultivating plants and flowers in a garden, so that the delicate and bright butterflies are invited to it. Please your relatives and comrades with these lovely insects. However, ascertain that you have a secure home for them. If one has cats, one should reconsider his decisions, for cats may be the cause of the end of butterflies.
Plan a Butterfly Garden according to your private choice. While planning, the common issues to ponder upon are the dimensions of the garden and the kind of flora and vegetation one would like to cultivate. While choosing a garden of your choice, remember that the garden should have the flora and vegetation that invite butterflies.
It is necessary to discover the types of vegetation and flora, which invite the variety butterflies dwelling in one’s locality. The library of the area will provide with this data. Any sort of water is necessary for the formation of the surroundings that will invite butterflies. Birdbaths appear striking. They also help to protect the insects from wandering cats and naughty dogs, by making them remain above the earth. A low, not very deep saucer, hanging from a tree or kept on a stick, will also serve the purpose.
While seeding a butterfly garden, one has to remember how he harmonizes the hues he has selected for his bed of flowers. Even though butterflies are least bothered by the selection of hues, one would hate his garden if it was a jumble of mismatched hues and surfaces. Lavender, Day Lilies, Yellow Sage, Purple Coneflower, Valerian, Daisies, Milkweed, Honeysuckle, Summer Lilac are some of the flowers which invite butterflies, for they are fascinated by flowers with nectar and not pollen.
It is convenient for a few people to sketch and paint a design of their butterfly garden diagram, to discover how their garden would look once completed. It has to be remembered that temperate hues such as red and orange are ostentatious and gaudy. Such hues leave a powerful impression when set in a dominant green backdrop. Hues having a calming and subdued effect, like calm blue and purple, look good against a white background, and generate an appearance of newness and brilliance.
Faisal Diab is involved with an online gardening project that informs and educates the gardening enthusiast through well-written articles. Discover how to get better at Organic Gardening, Indoor, and Vegetable Gardening.
