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Attracting Butterfly Activity To Your Garden




what to plant to have butterfly guests in your garden.
Is there anything prettier and more peaceful to do than to watch the flight of a colorful butterfly on a sunny, summer morning?

Getting butterflies to flitter through your garden is no accident. You can have these visitors, regularly, if you plan your garden carefully.

The adult butterfly dances from flower to flower - some are sipping nectar from each flower in your garden, while other adult butterflies scan for areas to lay their eggs. Take note that your butterfly garden is going to differ from other sections of your garden. Your natural instincts may be to kill off pests, larvae and such creatures in the garden. But in the butterfly garden, you will want to let their larvae grow - eating leaves as a caterpillar until they reach the pupal stage... your best results will occur when you use organic gardening methods.


Monarch catapillar on a Milkweed leaf
Photo by Dick Walton

To get butterflies flying through your landscape, a safety zone needs to be created for the butterflies. Butterflies frequent habitual zones, where they feel safe. One critera for them to visit and re-visit is to create zones where the landscape meets with the tree lines. Planting your butterfly gardens near or around trees, if possible, will increase the number of these graceful creatures gracing your garden.

A tip in attracting the Black Swallowtail or the Anise Swallowtail is to plant parsley, dill or fennel in your gardens. These plants attract Swallowtails.

To attract the Fritillary butterfly, for instance, plant Lupine flowers your garden. Or you may want to consider planting Snapdragons to attract butterflies that are native in your own area.

Butterflies are attracted to your garden for two main reasons. They are looking for plants that will provide food for their offspring. And they are looking for food and shelter for themselves.

Common Plants used to Feed Catapillars.

    Trees and Shrubs include:
    • Flowering dogwood trees (such as Cornus florida).
    • Viburnums (such as the fragrant Korean spice viburnum.
    • Butterfly Bush.
    • Easter cottonwood (Populus deltoides).
    • Oak trees (such as red oak trees, Quercus rubra).


    Herbs and Vegetables
    • Parsley, fennel and dill (Anethum graveolens).
    • Carrots and celery.


    Flowers
    • Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca).
    • Red clover (Trifolium pratense).
    • Hollyhocks (Alcea rosea).
    • Steeple bush, or meadow sweet.
    • Cosmos (Cosmos bipinnatus).
    • Zinnia (Zinnia elegans).

    Common Plants Used to Feed Butterflies.

    • Purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea).
    • Goldenrod (Solidago canadensis).
    • Lupine.
    • Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca).
    • Asters.
    • Snapdragons.
    • Joe Pye weed (Eupatorium maculatum).
    • Violets (such as Viola papilionacea).
    • Ironweed (Vernonia noveboracensis).
    • Coreopsis.

These flowers, trees and shrubs will call out to a variety of different butterfly species - bringing a range of these colorful flying insects into your life. And as your plants, shrubs, and flowers mature, the number of butterflies to your gardens will also increase. This increase in numbers can be an annual event. The plants and flowers that you put in your garden this year may only bring in a few members. But in the years to come, the natural returning instinct of the butterfly (old and new generations) will lead them back to your garden. One day you may have clouds of butterflies in your backyard, so be sure to keep your garden growing with plenty of butterfly food...

garden butterfly
Viceroy butterfly, often mistaken
for being a Monarch...
Photo by Tom Barnes

What else is the adult butterfly searching for in your garden? Butterflies seek areas to take shelter from high winds, rains, and summer storms. The trees and shrubs next to your butterfly gardens can provide this shelter. During the calm, warm sunny summer day the butterfly wwill enjoy the wide-open areas of your lawn and garden.

Butterflies are not like birds that can use a birdbath for water. Instead butterflies hunt out soft soil that is sandy-like to find water. The sand-like soil that allows water to puddle up after a rainstorm is a butterfly's delight. Keep this in mind and water some soil for your butterflies.

By creating a "floral atmosphere" that offers shelter, food, water and fragrance, your garden can become a butterfly paradise...

Gordon Goh is author of Simply Flower Garden offering quality useful tips for flower garden lovers.







News about Butterfly Gardens


The Star-Ledger - NJ.com

How to lure butterflies to your garden
The Star-Ledger - NJ.com
Pesticides should, of course, be banned in the butterfly garden. Less obvious, perhaps, is that some biological controls favored by organic gardeners are ...
That's no Monarch butterflySioux City Journal

all 2 news articles »


Anna Nicole, the opera, a 'classic American tale'
Toronto Star
The story of the Texas-born fried chicken waitress who married an 89-year-old oil tycoon shares the season with Madama Butterfly (an exploited, ...

and more »


Jackson County Floridan

Butterfly expert offers his advice
Jackson County Floridan
Even some edible garden plants, like carrots, dill and fennel are butterfly food. Plant in a sunny place that also offers butterflies some wind protection. ...

and more »


WWW Chicago outdoors: Swapping to swamping
Chicago Sun-Times (blog)
The grant funds are used to construct prairie plots, butterfly gardens, wetlands, and woodlands that benefit wildlife and serve as hands-on extensions of ...

and more »


Garden hosts Spring Butterfly Exhibit
Arizona Republic
10, 2010 02:40 PM Hundreds of North American butterflies have been safely shipped to the garden for the ninth annual Spring Butterfly Exhibit. ...



Zoo and Aquarium Visitor News

Butterfly guy
SuburbanJournals
With a butterfly garden outside, the Butterfly House even attracts local species. And it's home to more than butterflies. The staff also raise beetles, ...
Jurassic Dinosaur Bugs are Coming to Sophia M. Sachs Butterfly HouseZoo and Aquarium Visitor News

all 2 news articles »


The garden is a classroom at Dallas elementary schools
Dallas Morning News
Each participating school chooses the theme for its garden and, in Lee's case, the primary aim is to teach life cycles through a bird and butterfly garden. ...
Grand Prairie students dig in as they build new school gardenPegasus News

all 5 news articles »


Lowe's Funds Outdoor Learning Lab For Rock Hill Schools
WSOC Charlotte
District officials said the outdoor classroom will feature a butterfly garden, a small greenhouse, a cactus garden, a vegetable garden, palmetto trees, ...



Garden calendar
Detroit Free Press
Southeast Michigan Butterfly Association (SEMBA): "Increasing The Diversity of Butterfly Species by Using Native Plants and Grasses," with Chad Hughson, ...

and more »


Huntington Herald Dispatch

Gallery: Wildlife artist Chuck Ripper
Huntington Herald Dispatch
... to illustrate nine pictures of the flora and fauna that can be seen along the Huntington Museum of Art's new sensory trail and sensory butterfly garden. ...

and more »

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