Drawing Butterflies to Your Garden
Today’s hectic lifestyles make many yearn for the peace and quiet that can be found in a garden. To enhance the experience, why not try and attract butterflies to your corner of the world? Because of the decline in the use of pesticides in recent years there has been a resurgence in the caterpillar population – and caterpillars gaining adulthood, they can eventually grace us with the beauty of a butterfly once they have made their transformation.
To lure the silent, winged visitors to your backyard, patio or balcony all you need to do is plant blossoms to attract them. With more than 700 species in North America, there are enough to go around for those gardeners willing to sow the seeds necessary to attract them.
Whether you live in the city or the country, if you provide butterflies with the habitat they crave, you can help them survive and flourish in your own backyard. To have a successful butterfly garden, you need to first provide food for the caterpillar as well as plants that cater to the butterfly. Butterflies feed on nectar, but caterpillars need plants on which to feed.
Many herbs including dill, fennel and parsley as well as most plants in the mint family are attractive to the growing caterpillar. A caterpillar will eat more than 1,000 times its own size before it’s full grown.
Butterflies are attracted to clumps of flowers. Sweet Williams, Echinacea – a tall cone-shaped flower – and bee balms are plants that could lure butterflies to your patch of earth. Staggering wild and cultivated plans of varying heights and blooming times are necessary to attract the winged beauties. Butterflies also appreciate a windbreak made of tall, flowering shrubs, fencing or evergreens. The taller plants will also provide the butterfly with shade on a hot day or a leafy canopy if it rains. Sometimes, placing a piece of overripe fruit in the vicinity of your garden will draw butterflies.
There are man-made butterfly houses on the market but you’re better off with natural shelters for your butterfly visitors. Butterflies seek shelter at night and in bad weather but will look for that in natural environments. Butterflies are not demanding visitors but because they are need warmth in which to take flight – as such you should offer your butterflies a large flat rock on which to sun themselves. They fly best when the temperatures range between the mid 70s and 90 degrees. You might also consider leaving a small piece of fruit out for the butterflies to feed on.
When looking for the plants that will grace your butterfly garden and attract the silent visitors be sure to include the bushy clover-like flowers of the globe amaranth; tall, flowering cosmos; shasta daisies, red asters, yellow marigolds, sweet alyssum, heliotrope, cornflowers, and don’t forget the butterfly bushes.
