How to Design A Butterfly Garden
Quick Tips for Making the Perfect Butterfly Garden:
- Avoid using pesticides or fungicides in your garden. Butterflies like organic nectar.
- Ensure your garden is full of nectar producing flowers for as much of the year as possible.
- If you cannot always have flowers install a butterfly feeder instead.
- Provide host plants for caterpillar butterflies
The actual design of your garden is actually of little importance to the butterfly. Planting flowers that they are attracted to will help bring them in as will some water – you may even think about adding some butterfly houses to make your garden that much more attractive. Some things to consider in your butterfly gardening design are the size of your garden and the types of flowers and plants you want to grow. Pick a style of garden that you like and ensure it contains the plants and flowers that appeal to the butterflies you wish to attract.
Of course, one of the key things to think about when planning a butterfly garden is what species of butterfly lives in your area and what types you want to attract. It is important to do thorough research on exactly which plants and flowers will attract these species of butterflies. Once you work out this decision and decide which types of butterflies you want flying around and visiting your home, then simply create your butterfly gardening plan around those species.
Although the butterflies don’t really care how your garden is planted, you probably do so it is important to coordinate the colors you choose for your flower beds. You want to avoid having your butterfly garden looking like a hodgepodge of unrelated colors and textures that could create confusion to you and maybe even the butterflies.
One way to come up with a good butterfly garden design is to draw and color a layout of your butterfly garden plan to see what it will look like when finished. Keep in mind that warm colors like red and orange are flashy and showy. 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.
Some of the plants you might think about including in your garden include Milkweed, Honeysuckle, Day Lilies, Lavendar, Yellow Sage, Valerian, Sunflower, Daisies, Purple Coneflower, Summer Lilac
How to Attract Butterflies to Your Garden
The flittering of the butterfly through your garden is no accident if you planned your garden carefully. The adult butterfly flitters from flower to flower – sipping nectar from many flowers in your gardens, while other adult butterflies search for areas to lay their larvae. It is good to take note that the butterfly garden is going to differ from other areas of your garden. Your natural instincts will be to kill off pests, larvae and creatures in the garden, but in the butterfly garden your best results are noticed when you use organic gardening: Which means no chemicals at all.
In you want to include the use of butterflies in your landscape you will need to create a safety zone for your butterflies to feel safe. Butterflies frequent habitual zones, where they feel safe and where areas of the landscape meet with the tree lines. Creating your butterfly gardens near or around trees will help in attracting even more of these graceful creatures to your gardens.
A tip in attracting the Black Swallowtail or the Anise Swallowtail is this: Plant parsley, dill or fennel in your gardens, these plants attract this certain butterfly. If these herbs are not your favorites, you can attract other types of butterflies using other flowers. To attract the Fritillary butterfly for instance, plant Lupine flowers your garden. Or you may want to consider planting Snapdragons to attract butterflies that are native in your own area. Your early butterfly gardens are going to attract butterflies only in passing, but creating and growing the gardens that offer a safe haven for the butterfly will urge them to stay in your garden.
Butterflies are attracted to areas of your gardens where they can gather food for their offspring. The caterpillar will eat from the plants while the adult butterflies will sip on the nectar of the flowers. As your plants, shrubs, and flowers mature, the amount of butterflies to your gardens will also increase. The plants and flowers that you put in your garden this year will attract only a few, but in the years to come the natural instinct of the butterfly will lead them to your garden.
What is the adult butterfly searching for in your gardens? The butterfly searches for areas to take shelter from the high winds, the rains, and the summer storms. This is where the trees and shrubs in your gardens become important in protecting the butterfly and offering shelter. During the normal, warm sunny summer day the butterfly wants the wide-open areas of your lawn and garden.
Butterflies will seek soft soil that is sandy-like to find water. The sand-like soil that allows water to puddle up after a rainstorm is a butterflies delight. The developing stages of the caterpillar to the butterfly are observed often in the established butterfly garden.
By creating the atmosphere in the garden that offers the shelter, food, water and the fragrance the butterfly is searching for you will have Butterfly Garden success.
With butterflies under threat from climate change, habitat destruction, and damaging industrial farming practises, it is more important than ever to build butterfly friendly gardens. It is a small gesture, that anyone with a garden can make, towards protecting butterflies and supporting the increasingly fragile ecosystems that support life on this planet. Thank you for reading.
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