Bringing butterflies into your garden for the purpose of entertainment can provide an enjoyable, therapeutic soothing retreat from your everyday life and this is the time of year that butterflies are looking for food and fun.

To start and maintain a successful butterfly garden is a fairly simple task. All you need is a little bit of room and the right plants. Butterflies rely on two different types of plants. A Host plant and a Larval plant. In other words, you will need a plant that the butterfly will lay eggs on that will provide nourishment for your newly hatched caterpillars and one that will provide food for your adult butterflies. An example of host plants that can survive in the heat of Hernando and Citrus counties would be milkweeds and passion vine. These plants not only can survive in the summer heat of West Central Florida but will provide the needed shade for the beautiful new visitors to your garden. A few choice Larval plants would be Red Pentas, Tropical Salvia, Trailing Lantana and Fire Bush. Tasty treats for the young creepy crawlys. Most herbs are also excellent butterfly attractants and as an added bonus, are useful culinary plants and provide a wonderful aroma to your garden.

A Water source with a fountain for easy access to water for drinking is also necessary for a butterfly garden, not to mention, a nice addition to any garden! If you choose to plant your garden in containers or window boxes, remember they may need more water than in the ground because containers dry out faster.

Now sit back and watch your butterfly garden grow!

Paige

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 5th, 2008 at 2:41 pm and is filed under Gardening. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.