Helping butterflies to thrive in your garden
20th Jul 2020
Wildlife-attracting features such as bee nest boxes, bird feeders and butterfly houses all proved popular in our recent research into the nation’s top garden trends. So, with the Big Butterfly Count underway (17th July – 9th August), we thought we’d look at some top tips for helping butterflies to thrive in your garden.
What and when?
- The best time to try and attract butterflies to your garden is from around March through to October
- Butterflies need nectar! It’s what they feed on, so plant variety of nectar rich flowers or plants such as mint, marigolds, lavender and Buddleja. Having a wide variety of species growing will help encourage wildlife generally too
- Avoid putting chemicals and pesticides on your plants
Warmth, wild gardens and window boxes
- Weeds can be a real pain for gardeners – but many of them will actually attract wildlife like bees and butterflies. So, consider keeping a few weeds if you can. In fact, if you have the space, why not let a little area of your garden go completely wild and let nature take its course?
- Butterflies like warmth and shelter so think about putting your plants in the most suitable location in your garden
- If you don’t have a garden consider a window box, plenty of butterfly-attracting plants will thrive in a window box in a sunny area
Food and shelter
- Growing your own fruit has plenty of benefits and the butterflies will enjoy feeding on this too
- For an extra treat for the butterflies, consider leaving the butterflies some ripe fruit on the ground – apparently they love mushy bananas!
- Consider getting your tools out and making your own butterfly feeder or butterfly house – here’s a great step by step guide
We hope you enjoy butterfly spotting in your outside space. To take part in the Big Butterfly Count visit https://bigbutterflycount.butterfly-conservation.org/
Browse here to view the wide range of Draper garden tools to help you get planting.
