June 11, 2000
Give Me A Home Where the Butterflies Roam
Sugar Creek Gardens
Family Day

Welcome to an extra meeting - a "Family Day" invitation from Sugar Creek Gardens.

Angela, and Ann invited us here to learn something about butterfly gardening. Depending on the age of your children, some describe butterflies as "Flowers flying in the sky."

Brightly colored butterflies can be a welcome addition to your backyard. To attract the greatest number of butterflies and have them become residents of your backyard, you will need to have plants that serve all the needs of all life stages of the butterfly. They need a place to lay eggs, food plants for the larva (caterpillar), and a place to form a chrysalis and provide nectar sources for the adult butterflies.

Adults in search for nectar, are attracted to red, yellow, orange, pink or purple blossoms that are flat-topped or clustered and have short flower tubes which allow the butterflies to reach the nectar with their proboscis. Nectar producing plants grown in open, sunny areas do best, as adults rarely feed on plants in the shade.

A butterfly garden can range from a large plot of land, to a 5' x 10' strip near a walkway, to a window box or a container garden. Since butterflies tend to be more active in the sun, large open sunny areas are an important factor for the garden. Some protection from the wind is also necessary, and this can be provided by planting some shrubbery plants such as Buddleia. It is important to provide plants on which the butterflies will be able to lay their eggs and that the caterpillars can feed upon. Thistle, Passion Flower, Spice Bush, Nasturtium are a few.

Butterflies cannot drink directly from open water so it is a good idea to create "puddles" of moist sand or mulch. Placing a few rocks or sticks in this "puddle" allows the butterflies to perch and drink. Rocks also provide a place where butterflies can bask to store body heat from the sun.