How To Make A Butterfly Garden


It may be January but that doesn’t stop you from dreaming up new ideas for your garden come spring.

Creating a butterfly garden can be an aesthetically pleasing and impressive addition to your home. Butterflies are beautiful and interesting to watch. By starting your own butterfly garden you are helping these creatures that have had their natural environment deposed by human civilization. Creating an butterfly garden can also be easy to accomplish with some basic planning and follow through. Go through the following steps to help you build a butterfly garden.

Understand What You Are Looking to Accomplish

The point of any butterfly garden is to attract butterflies. To do so it is important to start by planting a garden that will attract butterflies to it. It is often easiest to start by understanding the butterflies that are common in your surrounding area and considering any specific needs or plants that they may be attracted to. Then you can make a list of the different plants that are worth planning in your garden in order to attract them.

Choosing a Location for Your Garden

Next, dedicate an area for your butterfly garden. Butterfly gardens can be as small as a cardboard box to extensive and spread out over several acres. Understand the land size that you have available to dedicate to a butterfly garden and what you are hoping to occur with your butterfly garden. Choose a location for your garden that has close access to water and significant amounts of wildlife nearby.

Plant Your Garden

Once you are knowledgeable about the different types of butterflies in the area and what plants they like, and have a space devoted to your butterfly garden, you can start producing plants for your garden. Try to concentrate on native plants as they will typically grow better than foreign plants and the butterflies you attract will be familiar with the plants. Next learn how to best take care of these plants you are adding to your garden so that your butterflies can drive as well. The goal is to develop an efficient way of caring for your plants so you ultimately care for your butterflies as well by providing them with a quality food source.

Add on the Accessories

Now that you have your butterfly garden planted and ready to go it is time to add on the accessories. There are many items you can add to your butterfly garden including fences to protect your garden from trampling, butterfly houses that provide for an area where butterflies can escape from the extreme wind or cold that may suddenly occur, and an source of nectar that can help to replace the food that butterflies derive from flowers. These accessories can help to provide a better environment for the butterflies and aid in the sustainability of the local butterflies.


Creating a butterfly garden can be quite pleasing and can provide butterflies with a form of heaven on earth. Butterfly gardens are also pleasant for humans and provide places where people can sit back and read, chat, or simply have a cup of tea. Plant a butterfly garden today and develop a fun and interesting way of getting closer to nature by providing an idyllic spot to watch these magnificent creatures.

Today’s guest post was contributed by Zoe White from Cloverlawn Butterflies. Zoe is a southern California native who loves the beach, sports, and trying new foods.

Image Credit: Creative Commons image source