Butterflies can be attracted to your garden by a variety of methods including planting brightly coloured flowers and bushes, providing food in the form of rotten fruit or by providing other places where they will congregate. Flowers and Bushes
Allow a part of your garden to grow wild. Let the grass grow and scatter wildflower seed throughout the area. Plant brightly coloured flowers around the edge of the wild are. Single flowers are better than double blooms and mix up the colours. Butterflies like different colours, some will be attracted to yellow orange and red others will prefer blue, white or purple.
Some annual or prennials to choose include arabis, black-eyed susan, candytuft, catnip, daisies, asters, zinnias, lavender, phlox. For bushes and shrubs include, of course, the butterfly bush and also honeysuckle, hawthorn, potentilla, privet, mock orange and lilac.
Plant these close together in a mass as butterflies are attracted to lots of colour for the abundant supply of nectar rather than a few flowers in isolation.
Artificial Puddles
Butterflies also need to drink water so a anywhere there are puddles or small, shallow pools will attract them You can make a permanent pool by adding sand to a shallow dish and adding water, sweet drinks or stale beer. You could also add some fermenting fruit. Put dish somewhere in the garden, buried to the rim. The edges around a garden pond will also attract butterflies.
Butterfly Food
If you have a fruit tree in your garden leave the fallen fruit on the ground. Over ripe fruit is a good attractant for butterflies. Butterflies love fermenting fruit and vegetables so put out small amounts to attract them. Any fruit or vegetables will do, the mushier the better! Keep the fruit damp by sprinkling with water occasionally. Put uneaten bananas in the freeze. When defrosted the mushy fruit will be ideal for your butterfly feeder.
Butterfly Feeders
Make an easy butterfly feeder by using a shallow dish or saucer with a sloping rim. Use flower pot hangers to hang the dish in a shady place. Place it slightly higher than any neighbouring flowers. Add some brightly coloured plastic or silk flowers to attract the butterflies. Add mushy fruit, sprinkled with water or fruit juice and check regularly to make sure it hasn’t dried out.
Butterfly Nectar
Instead of rotten fruit you could make nectar. Boil a solution of 1 parts sugar to 4 parts water to dissolve the sugar. Don’t add any food colouring, to attract the butterflies add some plastic flowers around the feeder or any other brightly coloured object. Unused nectar can be stores in the refrigerator for about a week.
Sponge Butterfly Feeders
Soak brightly coloured sponges in butterfly nectar and hang from trees or pergolas in areas where you don’t have any other flowers.
