Watching colorful butterflies flying around your garden definitely sounds like a very exhilarating experience. For sure, you can watch it for free once you are able to attract them to your very own outdoor living space.
Attracting butterflies to come around your garden is not that difficult. The key is that you have to be handy enough to take care of their favorite flowers and plants so you can provide them with abundant food source and safe shelter.
There’s no need to hire an expert to invite those beautiful butterflies to your garden since you can get the job done all by yourself. You can turn your garden into a beautiful butterfly shelter in no time without costing you a lot.
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Below, we have a complete guide that you can use as an ultimate reference on How to Attract Butterflies.
How to Attract Butterflies
Let them feed around
Of course, the very first step that you can do is to turn your garden into a food source for them. By this, they will love to come to your garden since they can feed around freely.
As you may have known, butterflies feed on nectar to get them energized, so you can grow flowers that are reach of nectar around the spring and summer to attract them. Some attractive plants that you can consider are marigolds, bluebells, clover, garden mint, hyacinth, blackberry busher, and lavender.
One thing to keep in mind is that you need to keep those flowers watered all the time to keep their nectar supply. If they struggle with water, the nectars will reduce and butterflies won’t get attracted anymore.
Keep the garden warm
Butterflies hate cold, so you need to keep the temperature of your garden as warm as possible. For sure, it doesn’t mean that you have to install an outdoor heater that won’t really work to warm up your entire garden.
You just have to make sure that sunlight hits the flowers around the garden, especially the ones which are meant to attract the butterflies. That’s why spring and summer are the best seasons when butterflies and moths are active.
Further, butterflies also love to have ample space to fly around. Creating a flowerbed alongside your exterior area is a good idea.
Research your area
The next step is to do some research on the butterfly species which specifically live around your area. The area where you live must have some butterflies native, and you can see how their behavior is by watching what plants they love to feed on.
In this way, you can find out the right flowers that you need to plant in your garden. For instance, swallowtail butterflies love to feed on milk parsley so you can plant them if you find a lot of them in your area.
Don’t worry about the space
Though you have an outdoor area with limited space, you still can have a garden full of butterflies. To overcome this circumstance, you can maximize the use of a window box or pots.
Lavender, marigolds, and yarrow are some common plants that are easy to take care of even when you plant them in a window box or pot. Remember to always put them in an area with abundant sun lights.
Provide another food source
Besides the nectars of the flowers, butterflies also feed on discarded food especially around the time in an early spring through the late summer. The fallen fruits on the grounds can be another food source since they also provide sugar for them.
Rotting apples, berries, and pears are the ones that the butterfly loves the most. The riper the fruits are the more appetizing for them because they can’t eat hard fruits.
Let the wild plants grow
When you want to attract some butterflies to your garden, you need to reduce the weeding. Instead, let some wild plants grow around which will support the growth of the moth and caterpillars.
They love to feed on ivy, mixed grasses, ragwort, thistles, nettles, and holly. You don’t have to actually let them take over the space of your garden since that will turn it into a complete mess, Simply put a spot to grow some wild plants and let them grow tall during spring ad summer.
Careful use of pesticides
As you may have been aware, pesticides are harmful to pollinating insects including butterflies. Don’t expect the butterflies will come to your garden if those flowers are covered by pesticides since they will surely hate them.
You can still use pesticides if you really have to but always avoid them around the area where you grow the flowering plants. You may also need to check whether the plants that you bought contain pesticides or not.
The best way is that you should buy organic plants or grow the ones on your own to avoid any issues that will prevent the butterfly from coming to your garden.
Turn the garden into a shelter
As cold-blooded creatures, butterflies need warmth to survive and, unfortunately, the sun doesn’t always shine through the year, especially if you live in an area with colder temperatures. When the rainy season comes, butterflies need some kind of shelters like hiding under large leaves or trees.
Therefore, you have to make sure that you plant enough trees and shrubs in your garden so those butterflies can have their shelter when it rains, Consider adding hedgerows to your landscaping if you have enough room.
In addition, minimize pruning even when it comes to winter. Some butterflies will lay their eggs around the season and you will see that your garden full of butterflies when the spring comes.
So those are the steps that you can follow on How to Attract Butterflies. You just have to do each step carefully so you invite the colorful butterflies to fly around your garden.
