Butterfly Gardening In Your Backyard
by John Yazo
Butterfly Gardening is one of the most popular hobbies of a gardener. Watching natural beauty of butterflies fluttering there wings around your yard and garden is a relaxing and joyful experience.
To create a successful butterfly garden you will need an environment that will meet all the needs of the butterflies stages from the egg, caterpillar, chrysalis and adult stage. A location with the proper amount of sunlight, plants for feeding, plants for laying there eggs, an area for the butterflies to rest along with staying warm and a source of water are the major parts in creating a successful butterfly garden.
In creating a butterfly garden for your area you will need to know what types of butterflies that you have in that area before you can start creating your garden. There are butterflies that like different types of plants than others. There are many plants that will attract most butterflies like bee balm, butterfly bush, lilac, purple cone flower, sunflowers and zinnias.The most common host plant that most butterflies will lay there eggs on and caterpillars will eat is the butterfly weed, also known as milkweed. Butterflies will only lay there eggs on plants that the caterpillar will eat and they are usually laid on the underside of the host plant leaf.
When planting your butterfly garden it is best to use heirloom or native plants. This types of plants are a better producer of nectar than the hybrid varieties. They will be a bigger producer than most hybrids and will attract other wildlife like hummingbirds to your garden. You can also do plantings of different grasses and shade plants will benefit in attracting toads to the garden to help with insect control.
Butterfly Gardening is a good hobby that can include the whole family. Getting kids involved in butterfly gardening is a fun way to teach them about nature and the benefits that butterflies have and other beneficial insect have in your garden.
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