Attract those beautiful Butterflies to your home when you create a butterfly garden!
Butterflies are just magical, and also enchanting and beautiful. You can attract this beauties to your garden. There are probably about 40 different species of butterflies and not only will they be beautiful to observe from egg to caterpillar to chyslis and then an adult butterfly but they will help to rid your garden of pests.
First of all you'll need lots of sunlight and then protection from those winds, most likely the best places of all would be; a slope, hedge, south or southeast of a wall. Try to provide this protection and sunlight as it is very necessary for your butterfly garden.
Butterflies love to hide in tall weeds, grasses and wildflowers as these provide not only protection but food and shelter for them. Hopefully you are an organic gardener and you won't be spraying chemicals around your beauties
as they wont' last long.
Plant a butterfly bush (buddleia) and also lantana along with black-eyed Susan, lavender, zinnias, and many more plants. The butterflies love these plants. Look as you walk along on perhaps a country road in your area at the butterflies and see what plants they seem to fly to and enjoy and plant those around your garden.
Butterflies love heavy perfume, and love the pink flamingo lawn ornaments, you might think of adding nectar to these ornaments to attract them.
They will sip nectar thru their tongues (proboscis). They seem to love the composites, members of the genus Compositae that have flowers with a center surrounded by a ray of petals. The daisies, marigold and zinnia are but a few of these flowers.
The average butterfly lives only two weeks and stay busy during that time reproducing and laying eggs. Females like to find the perfect host plant to deposit their progeny. You actually won't need to have the host plants in your garden, but if you do, you'll see your butterflies increase more rapidly. When their eggs hatch, the larvae (caterpillars) emerge and then begin feeding, usually on the leaves of the host plant. Most of the time these host plants are different from the plants the adult butterflies love for the nectar.
In the caterpillar stage the butterfly will not harm your garden crops. Now there is one caterpillar called the European cabbage white butterfly that loves to feed on brassicas. The Eastern black swallowtail caterpillar can be harmful to your parsley, carrots and dill but most likely the damage will be very small.
Caterpillars feed mostly on non-garden kinds of foliage and if they do eat anything in your garden it will be very minor.
Caterpillars that will become butterflies as adults tend to love, milkweed, native flowers, shrubs, nettles and thistles so if you have them growing nearby you won't even need to grow any special plants for them to nibble.
Butterflies love the sun so place some stones nearby so that they can sunbathe and grow. They also need water, you might provide a little mud puddle for them.
As you grow and attract these magical and beautiful butterflies you'll learn that people will hurt them more than birds, wasps and flies.
They'll want to catch them, but don't allow that in your butterfly garden, always be protective.
