Today’s feature tip comes from the University of Minnesota with their details on Creating a Butterfly Garden

Butterfly gardening involves planning your garden to attract, retain, and encourage butterfly populations. A sample garden plan is shown in Figure 1, and a list of host plants is given in Table 3 and Table 4. Flowers of similar colors grouped together are more attractive to both butterflies and the gardener.

You should select a variety of nectar-producing plants with the aim of providing flowers in bloom throughout the season. This will entice a continuous succession of new visitors to a yard. It is especially important to have flowers in mid to late summer, when most butterflies are active. Flowers with multiple florets that produce abundant nectar are ideal.

They’ve included garden plans as well as a couple dozen plant ideas to choose from. If butterfly gardening is something you’d like to try this year, iVillage’s Garden Web Butterfly Forum is a good place to hang out and ask questions or bounce ideas off those more experienced in the hobby.

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