So you want to create a live butterfly garden in your yard, but you're feeling a little intimidated. What kind of plants and flowers should you plant? How large or small should the garden be? And what if the butterflies don't come?
Well, relax. Building a garden for butterflies can seem like an enormous project that ought to only be handled by experts, but in fact it's actually quite easy. It's also a lot of fun, for children and adults alike.
Start by selecting a spot for the garden - look for a place with plenty of sunlight. Butterflies like the sun because they are cold-blooded creatures, and the sunlight warms their blood, allowing them to take flight. And the plants like it because for the most part they tend to function really well with it. That's how they grow!
How big should your garden be? To be honest, it can be very very small - even just a few plants in pots, if they're the right kinds of plants, will probably attract some butterflies. The question is how big a scope do you want? Are you after lots of species? Do you want an explosion of color that will last all summer through early fall? Or are you content with just a few winged visitors?
I often suggest that people go with a ten by ten foot garden. This is large enough to allow you to add a number of plants and shrubs that are friendly for butterflies, but it's not so large that taking care of it will take hours a day. You can always add a little space to a vegetable garden.
Start by doing what you would do for any garden. Till the space, add some good compost, maybe some lime. Supplement the soil in ways that will bolster the growth of plants. Then go ahead and start adding plants.
What should you plant? This is the hundred thousand dollar question. A basic list that will bring you a fairly broad variety of butterflies, while not burdening your with hard-to-care-for plants, includes: sunflowers, milkweed, violets, daisies, asters, roses, marigolds, butterfly bushes, and zinnias.
Bunch flowers of similar colors together - just as we are attracted to butterflies for the color of their lovely wings, so are they attracted to flowers for their colors. If you create too much of a patchwork quilt effect, they'll get confused. So keep your reds with your reds, your yellows with your yellows, and your purples with your purples.
Shoot to vary the plants a bit - you want some with broad leaves that will allow the butterfly to hide beneath it at night. You want some with fairly long stems so that the butterfly can rest in the sunlight after it has helped itself to the nectar.
It's a good idea to put some sand at various spots and dampen it from time to time. Butterflies aren't actually inclined to drink water, but they do appreciate moisture.
What's the best time to view your butterflies? Well, when the sun is up they will be far warmer and a lot more active. That's when they'll be fluttering about in the garden.
But early morning has its charms for butterfly watching as well. For example, butterflies who are waking up are not able to fly yet - this is the ideal time to get in close and really see them. It's a good time to snap a few photographs as well.
Building a butterfly garden can be a lot of fun - it's labor intensive at the outset, when you are turning over the soil and planting the flowers. But by the time the middle of summer rolls around, you're pretty much just sitting back and appreciating the show!
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