Building a Better Butterfly Garden

Butterflies are a wonderful addition to any garden. Like people, they have their own preferences for shelter, food and activities. If you are thinking about designing a garden bed for these 'floating flowers', you will need to plan carefully.

Climate. While the overall climate that you live in will determine which butterflies are native to your area, the micro climate you create will also determine how many butterflies arrive, and how long they stay. Butterflies require a warm environment. If they are too cold, they cannot fly and collect nectar. Therefore, it is important that your new garden be in a sunny location. Preferably full sun all day long. 

Place some rocks in your garden bed. Butterflies will sun themselves on these rocks to warm up before taking flight. You will also want to make sure your butterfly bed is sheltered from wind. Especially if you live in an area prone to heavy gusting. Butterflies need protection from the wind, and will avoid your area if they are unable to fly without expending too much energy.

Nutrients. Flowers provide nectar, but butterflies also require a source of minerals. The easiest way to do this is to provide a mineral slurry for them. Butterflies do not drink in a traditional sense, but more sip a very thin layer of moisture. You can take an aluminum pie tin, poke holes in the bottom and put a mixture of soil and sand in it. Then add water to dampen the mixture into a kind of slurry. The butterflies can then sip nutrients from this mix, which is called 'puddling'.  You do not want this container to hold water, as butterflies can drown very easily in just a bit of standing water.

Food. The fun category! Butterflies mostly drink nectar from flowering plants. While most any flowering plants will do, there are some flowers that are considered butterfly magnets. These include: coneflowers, butterfly bushes, bee balm, asters, lavender, zinnias, sedum, butterfly weed and coreopsis, to name a few.  With careful planning, you can have butterfly attracting blooms from spring to frost. 

Butterfly feeding on nectar

Credit: Cheryl Empey

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