Let's see together how to attract butterflies to our garden, planning plants and flowers to plant and drawing up a list of butterflies.
Attract butterflies in your own garden not only can it bring a sense of pleasure to the eyes, but it certainly also ties into something far more important: the concept of biodiversity.
With the enormous development of our cities, it is nature who suffers the greatest consequences and what happens is that there is a continuity decrease in natural meadows, habitat for butterflies, birds and the small wildlife. Fortunately though attract butterflies (and other small insects) is really easy.
Le butterflies don't have a sense of smell as we understand it, in fact, they do not know if a flower has the nectar they desire or not until they rest on it. Also colors and scents have a specific purpose: some diurnal butterflies are attracted to red and purple while others prefer yellow and blue.
But the butterflies they are attracted to large colored flowers, definitely colorful and better if in full sun, so asouthern exposure is really ideal (but don't be discouraged if it's not the location of your garden, I said it was ideal and not a sine qua non!) but a garden for butterflies can be of any size so don't be discouraged if you only have a small space available, there are also small houses on the market made especially for hosting small moths.
Index
How to get started
La creating a garden for butterflies should start with a proper search, to know qual types of butterflies can be found in the area where it lives: it is important to know which adult butterflies you can find because this will help you in choice of plants which they feed on.
Do one list of all different types of butterflies and therefore knowing which flowers and plants they feed on or on which they lay their eggs is really the first step to take.
Flowers with a lot of nectar are certainly the most loved: choose some plants that will bloom as long as possible as their nectar will be the source of food for the butterflies.
So don't forget roses, geraniums, lilies but also petunias, dahlias, sunflowers, blueberries, lilacs, calendula, cosmos, violets, marigolds or Impatients and keep your garden as differentiated as possible to attract the greatest number of guests.
But the centerpiece of a butterfly garden must be there Buddleja or butterfly tree (its name derives from the fact that the prolonged and fragrant flowering throughout the summer facilitates the continuous visit of the butterflies) because growing very tall it will be one of the first flowers that butterflies will see.
Plan and draw the garden
You can then plan the garden by making a drawing and thus putting the plants in order that you want to plant. In this way it is possible to obtain an overview of the project and therefore understand how much space is needed.
Butterflies love stones because they heat up in the sun and allow them to fare “basking”Furthermore, having small bushes on which they can rest and shelter from the wind is a perfect choice not to mention that these same plants can turn into food for the young butterfly: the caterpillars.
I caterpillarsin fact, they need to feed to develop into a butterfly and if they do not find food they will die or migrate. Then plant some herbs such as the aneto, fennel and parsley and you will see many little caterpillars running around happily. Also, butterflies love puddles of mud where they can drink water and absorb minerals so an area of moist soil will certainly make them happy.
But most of all, your garden is absolutely free of pesticides. Opt for natural methods and for organic fertilizer such as compost.
Trick to attract butterflies to the garden
Finally, a little trick to attract them and be able to observe them more easily: place 4 parts of water and 1 of sugar in a saucepan and boil the solution thus obtained until the sugar dissolves, then let it cool and put it once cold in a shallow container (a saucer or coffee saucer) then saturate a paper napkin with the solution and place next to a stone in your garden or put a stone in the container itself so that the butterflies have a place to rest on: you will see them rushing in no time don't tell.
In conclusion needless to mention the educational importance of this project, a very useful thing would be to have the children of the house keep a small diary of each of the different butterfly species that visit the garden.
Allowing children to observe butterflies from life and then have them do a research to try to learn something more about what has just been seen is the best method to transform the love for nature resulting from the observations into fun and learning.
Read also:
- How to build insect houses
- Butterflies face extinction, that's why
