Attracting Butterflies to Your Garden

It’s easy to attract colorful hummingbirds and butterflies to your garden. By providing for their needs, they’ll return year after yard.

Here are a few tips for attracting hummingbirds and butterflies to your garden:

Hummingbirds

• Hummingbirds eat flower nectar, tree sap, insects and pollen. Set up a hummingbird feeder, as an additional food sources. Click here for bird feeder options.
• Hummingbirds love water, especially if it is moving. A gentle, continuous flow from a fountain is a perfect addition to the garden.
• With an impressive 100 wing beats per second and speeds in excess of 25mph, hummingbirds appear to always be on the go. However, they spend 80% of their time perching on twigs and other suitable places. The Original Hummingbird Swing gives hummingbirds a nice place to perch. When placed near a food source, they could spend most of the day there. Watch the video below to see!
• Hummingbird favorites usually, but not always, have long and tubular blossoms. The shape limits insect access to the nectar inside. Hummingbirds like blossoms with lots of concentrated nectar.
• Hummingbirds are attracted to a garden that includes open spaces, allowing them to move freely from one nectar source to another.
• Select plants that have a variety of bloom times during the time pollinators are expected in your area.

Butterflies

• Plants should receive full sun from mid-morning to the mid-afternoon. Butterfly adults generally feed only in the sun.
• Did you know? Butterflies drink nectar from flowers through their tongues, which function much like straws.
• Butterflies need sun for orientation and to warm their wings for flight. Place flat stones in your garden to provide space for butterflies to rest and bask in the sun.
• Butterflies often congregate on wet sand and mud to “puddle” – drinking water and extracting minerals from damp puddles. Place coarse sand in a shallow pan and then insert the pan in the soil of your habitat. Make sure to keep the sand moist.
• Select plants that have a variety of bloom times during the time pollinators are expected in your area.