Gardening For The Butterflies

What is butterfly gardening? Simply put butterfly gardening is the art of growing flowers and plants that will attract these multicolored and dainty creatures to your garden. Delight your family and visitors with gorgeous butterflies, but be sure to create a safe habitat for them. If you own cats rethink your plans, because it would be a shame to attract these lovely insects to their death.

The design of your butterfly garden is a matter of personal choice. Usual points to consider are the size of your garden and the types of flowers and plants you want to grow. Pick a style of garden that appeals to you, but make certain it also contains the plants and flowers that appeal to the butterflies you wish to attract.

It is essential to find out which plants and flowers will attract the species of butterflies. That lives in your area. This information can be found at the local library or on the Internet.
To produce the kind of surroundings that butterflies find attractive, you will also need water of some kind. A birdbath will look nice and keep the butterflies up off the ground, away from stray cats or mischievous puppies. A shallow dish on a post or hung in a tree will do just as well.

When planting your butterfly garden is careful how you manage the colors you choose for your flowerbeds. Although butterflies do not care about your choice of color, you don't want your garden to be a mixture of unrelated colors and textures. Butterflies are attracted to those flowers that have nectar rather than pollen, like honeysuckle, milkweed, summer lilac, Valerian, daisies, Purple Coneflower, Yellow Sage, day lilies and lavender.

Some people find it useful to draw and color a layout of their butterfly gardening plan to see what the completed product would look like. Keep in mind that warm colors like red and orange are flashy and showy. These colors have a greater impact against a strong green background. Cool colors such as blue and purple are soothing and toned down and would work better with a white contrast to create the look of freshness and brightness.