Friday, March 4
Butterfly Friendly Landscaping
Butterfly gardens are easy to grow.
Choose a landscape that butterflies find appealing to eat. You will have some holes in a few leaves, but the entertainment from so many butterflies around is more than worth it. There are two stages of butterfly gardening. First, butterflies are attracted to drink flower nectar and then lay eggs. In the second stage, their caterpillars eat the leaves until they become butterflies, thus completing the cycle.
Butterflies often like the nectar from purple coneflowers, lavender, and even things like Joe Pye weed. A milkweed is an excellent option as, besides being a nectar plant for some species, it is the sole diet for the Monarch butterfly in caterpillar form. Other plants that butterfly larvae like are trees like willows and cottonwoods and even common weeds like plantain. If you want to go all the way, make a small puddling area where butterflies can drink from, and you'll have an array that's sure to entice butterflies for many afternoon worths of window watching. Milkweed, an all-purpose butterfly plant, is available in our mail-order nursery.