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Butterfly gardens contain not only lovely plants but they are designed specifically to attract butterflies. Butterfly gardens can be grown anywhere but they are particularly suited to North America as most at butterfly attractive plants are native to this area. You don’t need a full garden of butterfly plants but can attract butterflies with only just a few containers of butterfly plants.

Butterfly gardens should contain nectar plants, get a lot of sun, already have a local native butterfly source and fauna, be pesticide free, and contain host plants. North America contains many butterfly attractive plants that are native. These plants don’t need any special treatment and will thrive with only a small amount of attention. The best time to plant your garden is the spring. This will give the plants time to be in full power the next year.

It is important to have more than one nectar source in your garden. Planting many nectar source will encourage many butterflies to visit your garden and will also give the butterflies many places to lay eggs. Butterfly eggs tend to hatch about 3 to 6 days after they are laid and it will take the caterpillars about 6 weeks to emerge as full butterflies.

Some popular butterfly attracting plants are the Azalea, Black-eyed Susan, Butterfly Bush, Butterfly Weed, Egyptian Star Flower, Ironweed, Joe-Pye Weed, Lantana, French Marigold, New England Aster, Purple Coneflower, Swamp Milkweed, Blazing Star, Vervain and Zinnia.

You should plant your butterfly plants in full sun areas, as the plants need the sun to grow and produce nectar. Butterflies also need the sun so that they can warm up their body. Butterflies are attracted to strong scents and color. You want to use nectar producing plants as well as colorful plants. Butterflies can see color and they prefer dark pink, purple, yellow, orange and red. The color encourages the butterflies to stick around.

Butterflies also enjoy puddles and will frequently congregate at small puddles. It is easy to make small permanent puddles in your garden. You should use sweet liquids like sweet drinks, stale beer and water. Butterflies like sweet foods so you c an encourage them to congregate by leaving overripe fruit by the puddles as well. Butterflies like to feed off of overripe fruit.

Host plants need to be planted besides nectar producing plants. These plants are where the butterflies will lay their eggs and once the caterpillars emerge they will feed on the host plant. Your garden should also be pesticide free, as most pesticides will kill the butterflies. Some natural plants that repel pests and are not harmful to butterflies are mint, herbs, petunias and marigolds.

Depending on the butterflies in your area you should plant the correct host plants accordingly. The Black Cherry attracts the Tiger Swallowtail, the Spicebush attracts the Spicebush Swallowtail, the Senna attracts the Cloudless Sulphur, the Milkweed attracts the Monarch, the Willow attracts the Red Spotted Purple, the Pawpaw attracts the Zebra Swallowtail, the Hop Tree attracts the Giant Swallowtail, and the Fennel attracts the Black Swallowtail.

You can find information on butterfly houses and butterflies from garden centers and nurseries, libraries, butterfly gardens, botanical gardens, butterfly houses, and on the Internet.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 23rd, 2008 at 11:53 am and is filed under Garden. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.