Starting a Butterfly Garden
A butterfly garden provides food for butterflies during various stages of their life cycle as well as plants for shelter. You can create a new garden area dedicated to butterfly gardening, or add butterfly plants to an existing landscape. You can even create butterfly gardens in a container. It's easy, fun and creates a beautiful garden for the whole family to enjoy!
You'll need a sunny location for butterfly garden plants or to build a new butterfly garden. Most butterfly garden plants require full, bright sunlight, defined as six or more hours of sunshine per day. Look for an area that is slightly screened from prevailing winds, too, if possible. My own butterfly garden is in a sunny location at the base of a slope, which shields it from the worst winds.
My butterfly garden.
Build a new butterfly garden around perennials and shrubs that attract butterflies. It's a great idea to use native plants in your garden. Some ideas for native plants that attract butterflies include Echinacea (coneflower), Butterfly Weed (Aesclepia tuberosa), goldenrod, milkweed, blazing star, asters, and Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia.) Butterfly bush (Buddleia) can be invasive and is non-native, but it does attract many butterflies and provides screening and protection from prevailing winds.
Gaillardia (above) is also a wonderful plant to attract butterflies to the garden. It seeds very easily and is drought-tolerant. Salvia and catmint (Nepeta) are other great butterfly garden perennials. Other great plants for a butterfly garden include annuals such as lantana, marigolds, petunias, verbena and geraniums.
Don't forget low-growing, early spring blooming flowers like phlox (above). When planning your butterfly garden, mix up plants that bloom during early spring, spring, summer and fall to provide many opportunities for butterflies to feed.
A meadow-like effect in my garden.
I've put together a huge resource about butterfly gardening on my website. It includes detailed plant lists and instructions to help you plan and build your very own butterfly garden. I hope you enjoy it! All of the pictures in this article were taken by me in my garden, which I hope inspires and delights you too.
Want more details about this and other DIY projects? Check out my blog post!
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You have collected an amazing amount of information on your website. I'd definitely encourage people who want butterflies to plant ironweed. It's proved a magnet in my garden.
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