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Butterfly Garden Basics | Bring Butterflies to Your Garden
Butterfly Gardening
by Jane Lake
Description: How to attract butterflies to your garden.
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Butterfly gardening is not only a joy, it is one way that you can help
restore declining butterfly populations. Simply adding a few new plants to
your backyard may attract dozens of different butterflies, according to
landscape designers at the University of Guelph.
Butterflies, like honeybees, are excellent pollinators and will help
increase your flower, fruit and vegetable production if you provide them
with a variety of flowers and shrubs. They are also beautiful to watch, and
are sometimes called "flowers on the wing."
- Begin by seeding part of your yard with a wildflower or butterfly seed
mix, available through seed catalogues and garden centers. Wildflowers are a
good food source for butterflies and their caterpillars.
- Choose simple flowers over double hybrids. They offer an easy-to-reach
nectar source.
- Provide a broad range of flower colors. Some butterflies like oranges,
reds and yellows while others are drawn toward white, purple or blue
flowers.
- Arrange wildflowers and cultivated plants in clumps to make it easier for
butterflies to identify them as a source of nectar.
- If caterpillars are destroying favorite plants, transfer them by hand to
another food source. Avoid the use of pesticides, which can kill butterflies
and other beneficial insects.
- Some common caterpillar food sources are asters, borage, chickweed,
clover, crabgrass, hollyhocks, lupines, mallows, marigold, milkweed or
butterfly weed, nasturtium, parsley, pearly everlasting, ragweed, spicebush,
thistle, violets and wisteria. Caterpillars also thrive on trees such as
ash, birch, black locust, elm and oak.
- Annual nectar plants include ageratum, alyssum, candy tuft, dill, cosmos,
pinks, pin cushion flower, verbena and zinnia.
- Common perennial nectar plants include chives, onions, pearly everlasting,
chamomile, butterfly weed, milkweeds, daisies, thistles, purple coneflower,
sea holly, blanket flower, lavender, marjoram, mints, moss phlox, sage,
stonecrops, goldenrod, dandelion and valerian.
Remember that butterflies are cold-blooded insects that bask in the sun to
warm their wings for flight and to orient themselves. They also need shelter
from the wind, a source of water, and partly shady areas provided by trees
and shrubs.
Jane Lake is a professional writer whose articles have appeared in Canadian
Living, You, Modern Woman, Exchange and Highlights magazines. To view all
of her nature articles, including how to make homemade nectar for
hummingbirds and orioles, plus more advice on butterfly gardening, see her
nature crafts section.