Summer Activity for the Family: Build a Butterfly Garden

Discover the beauty of butterflies with this fun summer activity that both girls and boys will enjoy. This summer activity for children enters the beautiful world of butterflies. Not only is this summer activity for children fun it is also educational. There are a number of common butterflies that you can observe during this summer activity. The most common of these are White Admirals, Fritillaries, and Monarchs. Each butterfly has its own distinct markings and is attracted to different flowers.

The first part of this summer activity for children is getting the butterflies to come to your back yard. So how to you do this? Well the best way is to plant the butterflies favourite flowers in your yard. This part of the summer activity adds an additional fun and educational element as not only will children have the chance to learn about butterflies they will be able to learn about various flowers and how to plant them.

Ideally you will want to designate a particular area of your yard for a butterfly garden so that you can observe a variety of butterflies in one place. It is best to choose a quiet sunny location protected from the wind to plant the flowers that will attract the butterflies.

After you have chosen the location of the butterfly garden decide which flowers you want to plant there. The follow are some of the most popular flowers amongst butterflies so make sure to plant a good selection of them. The best flowers are marigolds, zinnia, cosmos, impatiens, ageratum, butterfly weed, purple cornflower, coreopsis, bee balm and black eyed susan. To help you decide which are the best flowers to plant for where you live do a little research about the butterflies that live in your local area. A great place to do some research is your local library or nature centre. For example Monarchs like zinnia, White Admirals and Fritillaries like purple cornflower and Milbert's Tortoiseshells like marigolds. If you plant a wide variety of flowers you may attract not only the most common butterfly species but some of the more rare ones as well.