How to Establish a Butterfly Garden

• Butterfly gardens provide pleasant surroundings, photo opportunities, and an outlet for gardening talent. Young people often get their first interest in nature through learning about butterflies. Butterfly gardens can be as small as a raised bed or as large as a nearby field. No need to call a landscaper, just follow these easy steps to build your own inexpensive butterfly garden.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• • Garden tools, a selection of small plant and shrubs, shallow dishes.

1. Select a 4 foot deep rectangular, sunny site with protection from wind for your butterfly garden and prepare the soil for growing plants and shrubs suitable for your climate

2. Select a wide variety of nectar plants for adult butterflies to feed on, and foliage plants for egg laying and caterpillars. Seek the help of a local garden center in plant selection for your local butterfly species. Place groups of taller species in the back, mid-sized in the middle and short in the front to please the eye and to accommodate both low-feeding and high-feeding butterflies. Stagger wild and cultivated plants, as well as blooming times of the day and year. Groups of the same plants will be easier for butterflies to see than singly planted flowers. Mulch the finished garden.

3. Place shallow dishes filled with sand or loam and soaked with water to create butterfly drinking "puddles." Place low rocks or sticks in these "puddles" to act as dry perches or warm places to bask and store body heat from the sun.

4. Reserve one small drinking dish for liquids such as stale beer, sweet drinks or overripe fruit. Enjoy.

Tips & Warnings

• Plant selection and butterfly preferences: 1. Tekulsky, M. The Butterfly Garden, Harvard Common Press, Boston, 1985. 144 pp. 2. Xerces Society/Smithsonian Institution. 3. Butterfly Gardening: Creating Summer Magic in Your Garden. Sierra Club Books, San Francisco and the National Wildlife Federation, Washington, D. C. 1990.