Ideal Butterfly Garden

Features of the Ideal Butterfly Garden

Meeting the Day-to-day Needs of Butterflies

Jan 2, 2010 Shirley Hollis

With an increasing interest in butterfly gardening much has been written on the topic. But It is important to understand that butterfly gardening is more than flowers.

Because of the growing interest in butterflies, one can find plans for and pictures of butterfly gardens online and in various publications. With planning, the ideas they offer can be incorporated into almost any landscaping project or existing landscape design. To start on your way to building a garden that will attract butterflies, you need to answer these basic but specific questions:

• Which butterflies have been spotted in your area?
• Which plants provide nectar to those particular butterflies’ adults?
• Which plants do those butterflies lay their eggs on?
• Which plants do their caterpillars use as food?
• Which features other than plants need to be included?

Attracting Butterflies

To start, you will need to identify which butterflies you can reasonably expect to attract to your butterfly garden. Your choices may be limited by the realities imposed by nature--for instance, it will not matter if you want to attract glasswing butterflies if they never come to your area. Begin by visiting the North American Butterfly Association website and familiarize yourself with the regional butterfly gardening guides that NABA developed specifically for various regions of the United States. Visit the one for your area and then familiarize yourself with Butterfly Gardening by Area to further your knowledge of butterflies in your local area. These sites will identify for you the butterflies you can expect to see in your garden and yard, along with information about the needs of those butterflies. Attracting butterflies is relatively simple if you know which butterflies you will likely be attracting and what their needs are.

Selecting Plants for Nectar

Read more at Suite101: Garden Plants to attract Butterflies: A Selection of Nectar Plants that Feed Butterflies Around the Year

Read more at Suite101: Creating a Butterfly Garden: How to Design a Garden to Attract Butterflies and Help Them Breed

Selecting Host Plants

Read about Butterfly Host Plants: Selecting Plants where Caterpillars Feed

Read more at Suite101: Features of the Ideal Butterfly Garden: Meeting the Day-to-day Needs of Butterflies http://wildlife-reserves.suite101.com/article.cfm/features_of_the_ideal_butterfly_garden#ixzz0bhvMYWCq