Select blooming plants of pink, yellow, red, orange and purple shades for planting at different times during the growing season to draw butterflies. This display will use bright colors to attract them.
Select perennials of differing heights to establish layered structures which caterpillars find easily and where they can escape wind while resting and eating.
Plants
The purpose of butterfly gardens is to keep butterflies visiting all through the growing season. This kind of garden needs both flowers that produce nectar and plants that offer larval sustenance to support adult butterflies. Plant both annual and perennial plants for your garden and add any preferred shrubs like glossy abelia, lilac summersweet or mockorange to create necessary shelter and color.
Blooming nectar plants supply adult butterflies with the energy they need while in flight. The best nectar plants for butterflies are those that bloom throughout the year including phlox and verbena along with daisy and aster flowers.
Plant perennial Joe Pye weed (Eupatorium spp) with its tall purple flower spikes alongside its small relative sedum ‘Little Joe’ to achieve year-round blooms in your garden. Integrate Yellow Black-eyed Susans with Red Bee Balm/Bergamots and Purple Wild Asters to draw butterflies to your garden.
Shelter
You can support wildlife and beautify your landscape with butterfly gardens while adding visual interest to your garden space. Scientific research benefits from butterfly gardens because they offer valuable information regarding national butterfly population trends.
You need to think about adult butterflies and caterpillars during the design process to establish the best butterfly garden. Butterflies are drawn to flowers for nectar sourcing while caterpillars need particular host plant leaves to finish their development stages.
Butterflies save energy when they feed on clusters of small flowers from plants because they can gather nectar from multiple blossoms at once. Butterflies gain necessary salts and minerals from shallow mud or sand puddles which promote their development as they bathe in them. The sunlight warming capability of large rocks makes them excellent spots for butterflies to raise their wing temperature especially in cold climates where winter winds might otherwise cause them to lose heat.
Water
To create an effective butterfly garden you need to provide for both adult butterflies and their larvae which are known as caterpillars. While blooming plants serve as nectar sources for butterflies caterpillars receive both food and protection from foliage plants.
A proper butterfly garden requires water sources to thrive. Many butterfly species including cloudless sulphur and sleepy orange butterflies gather near moist areas where they can drink from shallow puddles and extract essential minerals from wet soil through puddling.
Construct your own butterfly puddling station using moist sand, soil or fertilize-free composted manure in an old bird bath or terra cotta plant saucer with rocks or floating wooden pieces added for perching. These stations will deliver prolonged butterfly puddling enjoyment when properly constructed!
Weeds
Creating a butterfly garden involves deliberate planning to supply diverse flowers for different butterfly species along with specific leafy plants to support their larvae. The butterfly garden needs to have shade coverage available along with shelter and fresh water supplies at all times.
After flowers become pollinated they generate spindle-shaped seed pods which contain dark seeds connected together with short hairs for wind dispersal. To prevent the spread of seeds and stop new seed growth during late summer you should take out the seed pods before they naturally open.
Butterfly weed needs continuous watering like all flowering plants until its roots establish themselves in the soil. Butterfly weed develops drought resistance after establishment but its flowering may decrease in dry conditions. Limit fertilizer application because excessive nitrogen can damage development and prevent flowering. Butterfly weed requires protection from the cold since it shares the sensitivity to frost with many flowering plants yet remains mostly unharmed by deer until pests like aphids infest them which can then be managed through insecticidal soap use.