How To Attract Butterflies

with Flowers, Feeders, and Love

The secret to learning how to attract butterflies to your garden is making your yard more inviting to them.  You’ll need to provide plants that the caterpillars can use, food for the adult butterflies, and a good place for the butterflies to breed.

How To Attract Butterflies

Variety

How To Attract Butterflies? Plant Flowers like Azaleas

Your butterfly garden should contain at least one big patch of flowers that will attract butterflies.  You may want to plant a whole variety of flowers, from humble marigolds to more exotic azaleas. Select flowers that bloom in sequence , because this will keep butterflies visiting your garden more often. 

Shelter

Food and Water Feeders in Sheltered Garden Spot

Most varieties of butterflies will also need some sort of shelter from wind.  Although they really like open areas with a lot of sun, you’ll probably need to provide some sort of windbreak to protect them from high winds that can disturb them. Fences, shrubbery and even a multitude of taller plants nestled near your home or shed may provide enough shelter for butterflies.

Water

 Butterfly on wet leaf drinking water

Butterflies often congregate by the edges of mud puddles.  You’ve probably seen this before.  It isn’t known exactly why butterflies enjoy mud puddles so much, but it’s thought that it may be certain minerals that are present in the muddy water.  If you want to attract a lot of butterflies, you might consider keeping some damp areas in your garden with some bare patches of ground that might form temporary puddles after a rain fall or even after you water your garden.

A Place To Raise A Family  

Monarch Caterpillar on Parsley

Female butterflies need plants that can be eaten by the caterpillars that hatch from their eggs.  Black swallowtails prefer dill and parsley, for example.  Monarch butterflies typically only lay their eggs on milkweed.  Female butterflies spend a lot of time searching for these plants to lay their eggs on. Make it easier for them to increase the population.

Food to Drink

Painted Lady Butterfly on Thistle

Adult butterflies eat nectars from various flowers. In fact, butterflies don't actually eat, they drink! Flowers that contain a lot of nectar are especially attractive to butterflies.  These flowers are usually brightly colored and sweetly scented.  Some species of butterflies feed on the honeydew produced by aphids.  Some even feed on tree sap, pollen, bird feces, or rotting fruit! They also like sodium dissolved in water or your sweat.

Waste Ground

Butterfly on weeds

Bear in mind that many flowers that are preferred by butterflies are considered weeds.  For example, dandelion is very attractive to several types of butterflies.  Thistle, prickly and overbearing as it is, is another weed that many types of butterflies (and bees) enjoy.  Just as for attracting bees, is there a spot in your yard that can be left as waste ground?

Learning how to attract butterflies can be an exciting addition to your garden skills and one that will bring hours of pleasure. teaching your children will bring them closer to nature and a feeling of ownership and security on this Earth.

Got Kids? They can find answers about Butterflies at
The Children's Butterfly Site .
You'll find tons of photos from all over the world, coloring pictures to download and - Children, you can even submit your stories about butterflies and moths.

If you enjoyed Learning How To Attract Butterflies we hope you will share it with others. A world filled with fluttering butterflies just makes our hearts flutter, too. Thanks! We appreciate it.

Want to learn how to attract bees to your garden, too? They need all the help we can give them. Click here

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