Butterfly Garden Basics

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Learn what it takes to attract beautiful butterflies to your yard with these helpful Butterfly Garden Basics.

If you are looking to create a beautiful butterfly garden that draws in all sorts of winged wonders but don’t know where to start, you have come to the right place. With these Butterfly Garden Basics I'm going to give you a rundown of everything you need as well as simple tricks for a wonderfully successful butterfly garden.

Butterfly Garden Basics

The first thing you want to do is choose a good location for your butterfly garden. You want an area that gets mostly sun with some shade. Flowering plants and butterflies love a good sunny patch to grow in. Your garden can be small, even filling just a few containers or you can let it take over your entire yard and have a wonderful luxurious garden for the butterflies.

Once you have decided on a location, you want to plant a variety of flowers that will serve as host plants and nectar sources. Host plants will attract butterflies to lay their eggs, which will give you caterpillars who will use the host plant for food as it grows until they are ready to turn into…butterflies. Nectar flowers are important for the butterflies as a food source. Plant a buffet and you will be able to enjoy a large variety of butterflies daily. You will want a variety of each type to have a successful flourishing butterfly garden and try to include as many plants that are native to your area as possible.

12 Flowers that Attract Butterflies

Milkweed
Pentas
Lantana
Lavender
Butterfly Bush (Buddlela)
Marigold
Purple Coneflower
Sage
Verbena
Zinnias
Mexican Sunflower
Porterweed

Creating an Inviting Yard for Butterflies

The next feature to add to your butterfly garden is a watering station of some sort. As with all life they need water to sustain them. A bird feeder is too deep for the tiny creatures so they tend toward shallow puddles after a rainstorm or in your garden you water. It is super easy to provide them with their own water station however called a butterfly puddler and you can get the directions for making a butterfly puddler here.

As I mentioned earlier butterflies love the sun. They also love to bask and soak up the sunshine. Provide a couple rocks throughout your garden to give them the perfect spot to do just that. Large flat stones are and ideal resting and warming spot or your butterflies.

Avoid pesticides. While it will keep away other garden pests, it will either kill your caterpillars or may cause butterflies to emerge with defects and unable to fly. You probably also don't want your pets and children exposed to that so it is best to avoid them in your gardens, period.