How to Create a Butterfly Garden
When you decide to create a butterfly garden, there are many possibilities of what to include in your butterfly garden design. Here we have a few brief tips for you to start with when you begin to create a butterfly garden plan. These tips wil help you start the creative juices flowing as you begin to make a butterfly garden.
* First, before you even begin to create a butterfly garden, find out which butterflies are in your area. Take a hike around your home with a butterfly identification book to find the ones that are already present near your home. This will take a little time and some research but the results will make it easier to make a butterfly garden. After you have made your list of local butterfly species, write down in your butterfly garden plan what these particular species of butterflies use for nectar plants and what their larvae use for food plants as well.
* It is best when you create a butterfly garden plan to be sure that your butterfly garden plan inlcudes a location that gets at least six hours of sunlight per day. Butterflies are cold-blooded creatures. They will do better where they are warm and sheltered.
* Wind can be a butterfly’s worst enemy so be sure to have plenty of wind protection when you create a butterfly garden design. You can plant tall shrubs and other plants in order to create a wind break. Even fences and other structures around your home can provide a wind break as well as the siting of your home to the prevailing winds of your area. Know the direction of your area’s prevailing winds. A good choice when you create a butterfly garden is a nice ‘tucked away’ location that avoids heavy winds in the first place.
* Keeping the above points in mind, choose a suitable location to create a butterfly garden. To make a butterfly garden placed on the south side of your home with windbreaks on both the west and east sides could be the best of all worlds. A nice addition is to be sure that you are able to view your butterfly garden from inside your home. Don’t forget to provide seating outside as well to observe the antics of the butterflies.
*If your area permits, you may wish to create a butterfly garden as written by Barbara Damrosch in her book Theme Gardens. She suggests the use of an old basement, or home foundation, if such is available around your home or the place you wish to make a butterfly garden. As not too many of us have such a thing on our home lots, you might try to excavate an area and build a stone wall around the excavation, extending above the ground a ways, in order to simulate such a find. If you did carry through on such an idea, place several inches of gravel on the bottom of the excavation where you do not plant your nectar and food plants for the butterflies. Realizing such an excavation will hold some water, this will save you from a muddy walk through your butterfly garden after a rain. If you can, you might want some type of drainage out of your simulated old basement.
Now you have a few tips to help you create a butterfly garden. Please see our other Butterfly Garden articles for more information on how to make a butterfly garden and what to include in it.