Making a Butterfly Garden

Butterflies are a wonderful part of Britain’s wildlife; and Gardens are vital in supporting them in the UK. So here are a few things you can do to create a haven for caterpillars and butterflies.

Consider leaving a small corner of your lawn uncut, and allowing the grasses to grow long and lush and allow wildflowers such as Lady Smock to entwine with the grasses, this will attract spices such as Orange Tip butterfly.

Make way for a nettle patch as this will provide food for caterpillars and attract the biggest and boldest butterflies such as Tortoise Shells, Peacocks and Red Admirals. Even a small area of nettles in the garden would be beneficial.

Butterflies don’t fly in the in the rain, so making space for them to shelter is important as they like to hide deep in the vegetation allow for a hedge or shrub to grow, or invest in a butterfly house is a good idea.

Water also plays a crucial role in the life cycle of butterflies. So Providing a suitable water source in the garden is crucial for supporting butterfly populations. during dry weather is essential. Butterflies cannot drink water through their mouths; instead, they use a specialized structure called a proboscis to extract moisture, so they like to drink from shallow puddles, and wet soil. So fill shallow dishes with water for butterflies to gather and drink in dry weather.

Creating butterfly-friendly environments involves letting go of the idea of weeds, so sometimes adding these rough spaces into a garden can go against a gardeners desire for order and beauty. But the nettle patch can be a perfect square, or the wild grass flanked by a trimmed box hedge, order and wildlife gardening can go hand in hand, its just a matter of imagination.