Home & Garden
How to attract butterflies to the garden
If you’re keen to attract some new fluttering friends to your garden you’ve got to know how to provide the right conditions. Butterflies can be incredibly useful not only due to their beauty but their ability to pollinate your flowers.
Attracting butterflies involves incorporating a variety of plants that support all stages of life; safe spots for egg laying, food for caterpillars, places to form chrysalides and food sources for fully matured butterflies. Here’s how to tackle the basics.
- Plant native flowering plants – Butterflies and natives evolved together and often depend on each other to thrive. Planting natives indigenous to your local area provides butterflies with plenty of foliage for both the caterpillar and adult stages.
- Choose colours carefully – Butterflies love colour. Red, yellow, orange, pink and purple blossoms are all highly attractive to our fluttering friends.
- Be mindful of sunshine – Adult butterflies generally only feed in the sun, therefore you need to plant your nectar sources in a sunny spot that receives plenty of mid morning light.
- Plant for continuous bloom – Butterflies need nectar all year round so planting a crop that will continuously flower is important.
- Steer clear of insecticides – Common insecticides are designed to kill insects, including caterpillars. Steer well clear if you can.
- Take good care of caterpillars – If you want adult butterflies, you need to take care of the caterpillars. Planting plenty of native plants that caterpillars feed off is the best way of ensuring a thriving population.
- Provide a resting place – Butterflies enjoy basking in the sun as much as we do. Flat rocks in a sunny spot make for perfect “rest zones”.
- Provide a puddle – Butterflies love damp sand and shallow puddles. This is how they ingest water and access various minerals. Place some coarse sand in a shallow pan and insert the pan in the soil of your habitat, making sure to keep it moist.
Image credits: Getty Images