Butterfly gardens

Butterfly gardens

Creating butterfly gardens is another wonderful way to enjoy nature in your yard and garden. Like birds, creating gardens which will attract butterflies is as easy as putting out plants, water features, and housing areas designed just for them.

One of the best kinds of plants you can have in a butterfly garden is a butterfly bush. These grow quite fast and large though, so you’ll need to make sure you have room before planting them.

It’s not uncommon for a butterfly bush to grow four feet or more in a year, so if you have friends or family who already grow them, you may want to consider taking a cutting from theirs to get yours started. Butterfly bushes come in a variety of colors too, so you’ll be able to pick and choose your favorites, or colors that compliment the rest of your garden design.

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Garden Tip...

It is a mistake to crowd too many plants into a basket, if they grow they will soon become root-bound, stunted, and look sickly. If the hanging basket be of the ordinary size, one large and choice plant placed in the centre with a few graceful vines to droop over the edges, will have a better effect when established and growing, than if it were crowded with plants at the time of filling. Hanging baskets being constantly suspended, they are exposed to draughts of air from all sides, and the soil is soon dried out, hence careful watching is necessary in order to prevent the contents from becoming too dry. If the moss appears to be dry, take the basket down and dip it once or twice in a pail of water, this is better than sprinkling from a watering-pot. In filling hanging baskets, or vases of any kind, we invariably cover the surface of the soil with the same green moss used for lining, which, while it adds materially to the pleasing appearance of the whole, at the same time prevents the soil from drying out or becoming baked on the surface.
~ James Sheehan
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Another excellent plant to put in your garden which works wonderfully for attracting butterflies is called a butterfly weed. These are much smaller than the bushes, so they can be grown in small garden spaces or patio containers.

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Garden Tip...

The Calla Lily, or "The Lily of the Nile," is an old and popular favorite, and is found in window-garden collections everywhere. It is a native of the tropics, where it is said it grows to an enormous size; a single flower often measuring one to two feet in diameter. The Calla will attain its highest perfection if planted in a rich, mucky soil, obtained from a swamp or bog. It also requires an abundance of water during the growing season. Callas, like all other bulbous plants, must have a season of rest. If required to bloom during the winter or spring months, they must be rested in the summer season, if this is not done we must not expect to have any success in flowering them. The blooming season can be reversed if desired, by resting in winter. Without allowing them at least three months of rest, it is useless to expect to flower them successfully. By "resting," we mean to withhold water, and allow the leaves and stalks to die down completely to the bulb. Then turn the pot on its side under a tree or grape-arbor, and let the soil dry up completely; this will kill the stalk but not injure the bulb.
~ James Sheehan
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there are a wide variety of plants and flowers which will attract butterflies to your garden. Butterflies like nectar just as hummingbirds do though, so sometimes you can attract both into the same garden. One of the most difficult parts of creating a butterfly garden though, is the amount of time you must be patient. Butterflies take time to develop. You must create habitats which are friendly for both the grown butterflies and the larvae caterpillars which will emerge from the eggs they lay.

Once the eggs hatch too, your new caterpillars will start eating the host plants too. Many gardeners who aren’t familiar with this cycle will sometimes think something is wrong with their garden when they see spots caterpillars have been feeding on, so the Spray chemicals thinking that the plants have some Kind of bug or disease. If you spray the plants of course though, you’ll usually kill the caterpillars. And if you do that of course, you won’t end up with any butterflies.

Now in addition to putting plants and flowers in your garden to attract butterflies, there are little butterfly houses you can buy for both decoration and functionality too. Like bird houses, butterfly houses will provide butterflies safe and comfortable places to live, nest, and lay eggs. So providing these in your garden is almost guaranteed to start helping you build an active butterfly community in your yard.

Butterflies like water features too though, so be sure you’re providing this in an easily accessible area of your butterfly garden. If you don’t mind having different wildlife using the same things in your garden, you’ll probably be fine using a bird bath for both birds and butterflys. Just be sure to clean it out regularly without soap or chemicals, so it will stay a healthy and fun place for the wildlife to bath, drink and play.

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