Butterfly Gardening: Luring Nature’s Flying Beauties
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If you just want to get away from the stress and hectic pace of the day, spending time in a garden can bring a reprieve. Imagine how much more colorful and interesting it would be if you could lure butterflies to your corner of the world. It’s not hard, because the decline in the use of pesticides has resulted in an increase in the caterpillar population and caterpillars eventually make the transformation into colorful butterflies.
Whether you have an apartment balcony, a backyard or a patio, if you plant the right blossoms you could have a butterfly paradise in your own corner of the world. If you’re willing to plant the seeds necessary to grow the blossoms to attract butterflies, there are more than 700 species of them in North America to draw from.
Butterflies are at home in both rural and urban settings provided they are able to search out the habitat necessary to survive and flourish. A successful butterfly garden provides food for the caterpillar as well as the butterfly. While most butterflies feed on nectar, caterpillars need plants on which to feed.
A growing caterpillar will eat more than 1,000 times its own weight before it’s mature. Plants that appeal to the taste buds of caterpillars include herbs like dill, parsley and fennel. They are also attracted to most plants in the mint family and passionflowers.
Clumps of flowers in various colors and heights will attract butterflies. Some plants to harvest in your plot of earth include Sweet Williams, Echinacea – a tall cone-shaped flower – and bee balms. Wild and cultivated plants, of varying heights and blooming times are necessary to attract the butterfly. They also need windbreaks which can be made of tall, flowering shrubs, evergreens or fencing. The taller plants provide butterflies with shade on a hot day and a canopy of leaves in the event of a summer rain.
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.
Some of the best plants for attracting butterflies include: sweet alyssum, heliotrope, yellow marigolds, the bushy clover-like flowers of the globe amaranth, tall, flowering cosmos, shasta daisies, cornflowers, butterfly bushes and red asters.
Alan Greene is a professional writer and editor with many interests. Among them are gardening, online degrees for adults, self-improvement, financial aid for online university study, and world affairs.
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