Adding a butterfly garden to your yard will not only add bright colours it will be a point of beauty that you and your visitors will enjoy. This is a guide for how to build a butterfly garden in just a five steps.
Step 1: Chose A Location
When building a butterfly garden you can’t just stick it any old place. Some thought needs to go into the location of your butterfly garden. A butterfly garden is something that you will want to see and enjoy not hide away. Ideally a butterfly garden should be located in a prominent sunny spot that is protected from the wind such as near a fence or some shrubbery and is somewhere that is fairly quiet.
Step 2 Do Some Research
Before heading out buying a bunch of pretty flowers and planting them in hopes of flocks of butterflies arriving first go out and do some research about butterflies in your local area. Each type of butterfly likes different flowers as they have preferences of nectar tastes and colours. There are also certain flowers that encourage butterflies to breed so you may want to include some of these in your butterfly garden as well. Find out the type of butterflies that live in your area and what flowers they like the most. A great place to get the required information is your local nature centre. You could also try the local library. You may also want to buy a book about butterflies so you can get even more enjoyment out of your butterfly garden. This way you can use your book to identify your various visitors and quickly look up a little bit of information about them.
Step 3 Dig The Garden
This step of the how to build a butterfly garden is pretty straightforward. Get out your gardening tools and dig the garden. You may want to add some nice soil to give your soon to be planted flowers rich soft soil in which to grow.
Step 4 Buy The Flowers
This is where your research comes in. You will want to buy the types of flowers that your local butterflies will most like. You will also want a wide choice of flowers to encourage a variety of butterflies to visit and breed. Some of the most popular flowers with butterflies are Aster, Black-eyed Susan, Butterfly Weed, Lavender and Marigold. Another important factor to keep in mind while buying flowers is to buy flowers that will give your butterfly garden continuous bloom from spring to fall. This is because butterflies are active from the start of spring until late fall.
Step 5 Plant The Flowers
The final step in this how to build a butterfly garden guide is to plant your just bought flowers. You will want to plant the tallest flowers at the back of the garden and the smallest at the front. Make sure to plant the flower types in bunches and not in ones and twos. This is because butterflies are attracted to large areas of colour and it also makes it easier for them to get the nectar they need.
When you have completed your butterfly garden there are a few additional features you may want to add to make it even better. Butterflies tend to get their water from the soil or puddles. So you may want to add a puddle to your butterfly garden. To do this, bury a small container in the garden and fill it with rocks to the top. Then fill the container with water so that you now have a small butterfly. You will notice that the puddle attracts a number of butterflies as males butterflies tend to congregate around puddles. Another feature that your visiting butterflies would appreciate would be a couple of smooth stones in the sun. Butterflies like to bask in the sun because it raises their body temperatures. One note of great importance is to never use pesticides in or near your butterfly garden, as these are toxic to butterflies.
