Home » Plants & Animals » Cottage Garden » Live Butterflies Before Your Eyes

Live Butterflies Before Your Eyes

© Barbara M. Martin

Please note: Thank you for visiting my Cottage Garden topic and reading my columns, published here from February 1997 through spring 2003! This Cottage Garden column was written by Barbara M. Martin and is Copyrighted, including any photos, by Barbara M. Martin. It may not be altered or copied or published elsewhere in whole or in part without specific permission from the author. I regret I am no longer actively editing or contributing to this suite101.com topic as of mid-2003. Happy Gardening!

Every cottage garden should swarm with butterflies. Cottage gardeners love flowers of all kinds and especially adore fragrant and colorful plants, nurture a wide variety of growing things from fruit trees to vegetables to herbs as well as flowers, all perfect for supplying butterflies with nectar and other life-giving resources. This garden style is tailor-made for butterflies and their caterpillars and surpasses all others in actively allowing the gardener opportunities to attract and nurture them. (Links to lists of butterfly plants and more butterfly information follow this article below.) Here's how to get started.

The Butterfly Magnet

To create a butterfly garden, you need to provide them with food, water, shelter, sun and a healthy habitat. In actuality, this can be a few plants grouped together in pots on the deck or it can be the whole yard. Large or small, such a butterfly magnet will bring you positive energy and plenty of butterfly magic.

Gourmet Fare

The best welcome mat includes flowers providing nectar and plants supplying larval food. The more variety you offer, the wider the selection of butterflies you can attract. If in doubt, or as a supplement, you can always set out a plate of rotting fruit to see who is in the neighborhood.

Typically, purple coneflower, verbena bonariensis, lantana, cosmos, zinnias and butterfly bushes (buddleia) serve as nectar magnets but the lists of preferred plants are much longer than that and will vary somewhat depending on where you live. This is especially true if you want to attract butterflies all season long because different butterflies prefer to target different plants.

Butterflies Lay Eggs!

Encouraging butterflies to visit is fine and dandy, but for best results and even more butterflies you will want to allow for them to multiply. Happy butterflies will lay eggs on the plants in your garden. The tiny eggs can be single or in little groups or clusters. To me, they are virtually indistinguishable from pest insect eggs! That being the case, all you can do is keep an eye out for the hatch in a couple of weeks.

The copyright of the article Live Butterflies Before Your Eyes in Cottage Garden is owned by . Permission to republish Live Butterflies Before Your Eyes in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.