Who doesn’t love butterflies?
A garden benefits from the beauty and delicateness of these floating insects. But more than simply garden dressing, they also pollenate flowers, adding to the beauty of your garden spot.
In order to attract the best and the brightest, you’ll need to find the right plants that will nurture the complete life cycle of the butterfly – from larvae to flight. They need a place to lie their eggs, then plants which the caterpillars can feed off of, and a source of nectar when they spring into adulthood. The goal is to create a pollinator garden.
Landscaping Birmingham AL – Selecting the Right Plants
The number one rule for selecting the necessary plants is to ensure they’re native to your area.
There is an ecological cycle that exists between the butterflies and the plants, and there’s a integral dependency between the plants and the life cycle of the butterfly. When deciding on which plants to choose, keep color at the top of your list. Reds, yellows, pinks, oranges, and purples are the blossom colors that butterflies are drawn to. The form of the plant blossoms should be either flat topped or clustered.
Sunlight is obvious for plant growth, but then it comes to selecting the location for the nectar plants they should be exposed to direct sunlight from mid-morning through mid-afternoon. The reason? Butterflies only feed in the sun, which is why you won’t often see them on cloudy days. You can safely locate butterfly nectar sources in your vegetable garden if sunlight is limited.
To attract them all year around, plant according to a schedule that will have your nectar creating plants blooming at specific intervals, so when one plant stops blooming another will just be starting. Avoid using pesticides since the majority of them are deadly to the caterpillars.
Finally, butterflies, like people, need a place to rest their feet. You can create a parking space for them by laying out flat stones. Another thing butterflies do that people do when resting their feet is to get a drink of water. Butterflies “puddle,” which means you will find then in groups on puddles of water. You can help them along by creating an area of sand and water within the natural garden area.
Contact The Nelson Team at (205) 702-4426 or click here to email us for all of your outdoor living needs.
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