Tips For Planning Your Home Butterfly Garden

Planning a home butterfly garden can be a little bit more work than just planting a regular garden but it will be well worth the effort when you have colorful butterflies flitting about your garden all summer long.

The first thing you want to do is research the species of butterflies that live in your geographical area. Find out what time of summer they are most active and the types of plants whose nectar they prefer. If you have a specific species of butterfly that you are interested in attracting, make sure to plant plenty of his favorite plants.

Next, you want to pick a spot that gets plenty of sun. Butterflies are actually cold-blooded and they heat up in the sun - they need the warmth and sunlight to be able to move their wings properly. In addition to that, most of the flowers that your butterfly likes to drink from probably prefer sun so you want to pick an area that has about 6 hours of sun a day.

While you are choosing the area for your home butterfly garden, however, you want to make sure that it’s not too windy. As you can imagine butterflies can be strewn about pretty easily with even the most minor amount of wind and you want your garden to be a place that they can access and hang around in without effort so picking a spot that isn’t breezy or windy should be one of your top priorities.

Another thing a lot of people don’t realize is that butterflies like to have water around. A small bird bath or even a little damp area in the corner of the garden will be an added thing to attract these beautiful winged creatures. Why not consider adding a water fountain? It will provide water for both butterflies and birds and a soothing sound for you to listen to when you come to enjoy your butterfly garden.

When choosing your plants, you want to consider not only the plants that provide the nectar, but the plants that also can act as host plants for the caterpillars that will eventually turn into butterflies. Believe it or not, these are not the same plants! If you’ve provide plants that the caterpillars can use as nutrition and you might find you get more butterflies in your garden.

Once you have all your plants chosen, you want to draw up a rough sketch of your home butterfly garden. You just don’t want to go out and start planting willy-nilly because your garden will look chaotic and haphazard. While the butterflies probably won’t care about this, you want to create a space that is beautiful and serene to be in and in order to do this you need to do a little bit of planning. Make sure you plant the taller plants towards the back and the shorter ones towards the front so that you can get a view of the entire garden when you are admiring it. Also, plant plants of complementary colors together.

Don’t forget to include some place to sit and enjoy your butterflies!