Butterfly gardens contain not only lovely plants but they are designed specifically to attract butterflies. Butterfly gardens can be grown anywhere but they are particularly suited to North America as most at butterfly attractive plants are native to this area. You don’t need a full garden of butterfly plants but can attract butterflies with only just a few containers of butterfly plants.

Some general requirements for a butterfly garden are to have nectar plant source, larval host plants, pesticide free environment, full sun and some local butterfly fauna. Many butterfly attractive plants are native to North America and need little attention to grow or thrive. You should plant your garden in the spring with younger plants. This will give the plants the time to mature and be very strong the following year.

You need to have more than one nectar producing plant in your garden to attract many different types of butterflies. Many different nectar sources will encourage different butterflies as well as encouraging them to lay eggs in your garden. Once the eggs are hatched you should expect to see newborn butterflies in about 6 weeks.

Zinnia’s, Vervin, Blazing Star, Swamp Milkweed, Purple Coneflower, New England Aster, French Marigold, Lantana, Joe-Pye Weed, Ironweed, Egyptian Star Flower, Butterfly Weed, Butterfly Bush, Black-Eyed Susan and Azaleas are all plants that attract butterflies.

You should design your garden so there is plenty of available sun. The butterflies like the sun because it warms them up and the plants need the sun for food and energy to produce nectar. You should also plant colorful flowers, as butterflies are attracted to purple, orange, dark pink, yellow and red. Butterflies tend to hover around these colors. An interspersion of strong scented flowers and colorful ones will not only attract butterflies but will be very pleasing to the eye as well.

Standing water, like small puddles, are congregation points for male butterflies. You can create small areas of standing water in your garden. Fill a small lined area with water, stale beer or sweet drinks and wait for the butterflies. You can also create small puddles close to butterfly feeders or vice versa put some over ripe fruit by the puddle.

Host plants are needed if you want butterflies to lay eggs in your garden. Butterflies lay their eggs on the host plants because they provide food for the caterpillars. You also should not use any pesticides, as they will kill the butterflies. You can plant herbs, marigolds, mint and petunias to rebel pests instead of spraying pesticides.

Depending on the butterflies in your area you should plant the correct host plants accordingly. The Black Cherry attracts the Tiger Swallowtail, the Spicebush attracts the Spicebush Swallowtail, the Senna attracts the Cloudless Sulphur, the Milkweed attracts the Monarch, the Willow attracts the Red Spotted Purple, the Pawpaw attracts the Zebra Swallowtail, the Hop Tree attracts the Giant Swallowtail, and the Fennel attracts the Black Swallowtail.

You can learn more about butterflies and butterfly gardens at botanical gardens, zoos, garden centers and nurseries, butterfly houses, libraries and on the Internet. You can find everything you need to know about creating a butterfly garden in your area.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 22nd, 2008 at 2:56 am and is filed under Gardening. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.