How to Make a Butterfly Garden

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If you want to make your butterfly garden a success, you have to plant some of the proper plants designed for specific butterflies. The butterflies will flock to your garden if you have the right plants. Here are a few examples to start you off on a successful butterfly garden.

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Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

Things You’ll Need:

The correct plants
Time to keep a garden up and maintained

Step1

Milkweeds are a lovely addition to any garden setting. They are deer resistant and are prime locales for Monarch butterfly larvae. It has good nectar for other butterfly species, but you will see more Monarch butterflies around milkweeds than any other variety. Keep an eye out for aphids as milkweeds have a tendency to attract them. For an optimal butterfly garden, try many different varieties of Milkweed so that you can vary the color and the style of the garden setting.

Step2

Asclepias tuberosa L. (Butterfly Milkweed). This fine milkweed gets up to 2 to 3 feet in height and needs a spacing of around 14 to 18 inches apart. Its fire-orange blooms will appear from mid Summer to early Fall, and they prefer full sun. It is drought tolerant and prefers mildly acidic soil. Don't be alarmed if there aren't blooms in the first years, as it may take up to 3 years to flower. To propagate you may divide or direct sow seeds outdoors after frost. Some of the parts of this milkweed are poisonous, so be careful where you plant it.

Step3

Asclepias incarnata L. (Swamp Milkweed). This flower is a favorite among many different butterflies. It gets about 2.5 feet high on average and you need to space it around 2 feet apart. It is sun loving and you need to put it in a partially sunny locale. Test the soil as this prefers acidic soil. The flowers are pink or purple, and bloom from mid-summer to late fall. It is a clump forming plant, and you can divide these clumps to propagate or just direct sow the seeds outside after frost. Milkweeds tend to be susceptible to aphids, but being that they are the only plant that the Monarch Butterfly's larvae can survive on makes it worth it. This is a fragrant milkweed, but it can have toxic parts so be careful.

Step4

Asclepias hirtella (Barrens Milkweed). These flowers grow around 2 feet in height and are found in sandy but rocky soil. Their bloom period is from June to August. Their seeds disperse by wind, so take care to keep them enclosed for multiple growth seasons.

Step5

Asclepias purpurascens (Purple Milkweed). These pink or purple blooms grow around 2.5 feet high in pigtail pods. You can expect blooms from May to June when you plant in sandy soils.