Butterfly gardens are a wonderful, especially in the urban garden where they flitter from plant to plant. What will attract butterflies to your garden is water, food and shelter. While there are books on the subject, the following tips will help you create your own butterfly sanctuary:
* Locate in a sunny area. Butterflies like direct sunlight and heat to warm up their bodies.
* Provide a wind shelter by planting beside a fence, hedge or building.
* Avoid using chemical pesticides.
* Provide warm resting places around the garden with boards or a few flat stones.
* A shallow saucer, mud puddle or wet sand can supply needed water.
* Caterpillars have to eat - place milkweed, marigolds, red salvia, zinnias, lantana, impatiens, cosmos, thistle, clover, or goldenrod where their eating of plants will not be a problem. Other favorites are carrots, dill, parsley and nasturtium.
Different species of butterflies prefer different nectars, in both colors and tastes. Providing a wide variety of food plants will attract the greatest diversity of varieties. Try to determine what butterfly varieties are native to your area and which plants they visit. Staggering of plants and varieties allows for additional blooming times of the day and year. Groups of the same plants are easier for butterflies to see than singly planted flowers.
Many blooming flowers may be visited by butterflies, but perennial favorites include aster, coreopsis, echinacea, ice plant, rudbeckia, scabiosa, sedum, shasta daisy, and, of coarse, buddleia (butterfly bush).
For more pictures like the one above, click on Butterflies
of North America or
Caterpillars
of Eastern Forests
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