Butterfly Gardening – Welcome Your Winged Friends
July 14th, 2009
Filed in Garden Design
Tags: butterflies, butterfly gardening, herbs, pesticides
Even if it’s mid-summer, you can still plant a butterfly garden and welcome winged friends to your yard. Many butterflies go through several generations during a single summer, and now is the time to lure adult butterflies from a first or second generation this summer to the garden to lay eggs on host plants. Once the eggs hatch, you’ll have your own little butterfly farm right outside your window.
Get some Host Plants
Host plants are what the butterfly larvae (caterpillars) eat. You need host plants if you want to see many adult butterflies. Nectar plants help, but butterflies spend plenty of time looking for host plants on which they can lay eggs. Parsley, fennel, hollyhocks, and butterfly weed (asclepias) are the best host plants for attracting butterflies in three-quarters of North America. If you plant these, you are guaranteed caterpillars.
Make sure that you plant lots of each plant – sprinkle them in with the rest of your plants. That’s because caterpillars are hungry creatures and can eat a fennel plant to the ground in a day or two.
Get some Nectar Plants
Adult butterflies need nectar. Their favorite colors are orange, yellow, pink, red and magenta. Lantana, coneflower, aster, butterfly weed and salvia are great nectar plants. The salvia will also attract hummingbirds.
Stop Spraying Insecticides
To have butterflies all over your garden, you need to stop spraying ALL insecticides, even the organic varieties. Organic or not, they still kill, so you have to leave them off your grocery shopping list.
Provide a Water Source
A shallow dish with pebbles in the bottom and about 1/2 inch of water over the pebbles will attract butterflies.
Add all of those elements together, plant your garden, and you WILL see butterflies!
Check out a video I shot of a fat Black Swallowtail caterpillar in my butterfly garden:
July 14th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
That’s a very good post. Sometimes, I let the caterpillars grow up into butterflies in my garden eventhough they almost eat up my periwinkle plant. Although I’ve never seen them change into butterflies, somehow I am glad that a life cycle has been successfully completed. I never knew people do that too!