Butterfly Garden - a banquet
To attract butterflies to your garden and have them stay a while you need to offer them a banquet fit for ... well, a butterfly. This needs to be in a warm protected area with plenty of sunshine as butterflies are cold-blooded and need warmth to fly and feed, mate and lay eggs.
This banquet would include an abundance of nectar served in flowers that are open and welcoming. If they provide a landing platform like daisies, all the better. We plant a range of colours, shapes and sizes to cater to all tastes.
Butterflies enjoy a wild meadow effect with a few weeds flowering, rather than a well-manicured setting. Let a corner go wild if you have to be neat and trim.
Some butterflies when they find a good source of nectar – a flowering shrub for instance – will guard their patch aggressively chasing off other butterflies that come to feed. Sometimes one will be so busy chasing others you wonder if it has time to feed itself!
We gradually planted more butterfly nectar flower varieties as we learnt which ones are most attractive to our Plateau butterflies. This in turn encouraged more butterflies to visit and stay a while in our garden.
This banquet would include an abundance of nectar served in flowers that are open and welcoming. If they provide a landing platform like daisies, all the better. We plant a range of colours, shapes and sizes to cater to all tastes.
Butterflies enjoy a wild meadow effect with a few weeds flowering, rather than a well-manicured setting. Let a corner go wild if you have to be neat and trim.
Some butterflies when they find a good source of nectar – a flowering shrub for instance – will guard their patch aggressively chasing off other butterflies that come to feed. Sometimes one will be so busy chasing others you wonder if it has time to feed itself!
We gradually planted more butterfly nectar flower varieties as we learnt which ones are most attractive to our Plateau butterflies. This in turn encouraged more butterflies to visit and stay a while in our garden.
As we are 800 metres above sea level our days are cooler than along the coastal strip. However if the sun is shining we will have butterflies visit our garden throughout the year. There is a big difference to the numbers we see in the cool months compared to the warm or hot months and to the hours butterflies are on the wing each day. In mid-summer we generally start seeing butterflies around 7.30 am and they fly until about 7.00 pm. In mid winter it is usually around 09.00 am and to only about 03.00 pm.
Out of interest here is a listing, made on our property, of butterfly sightings recorded in one hour in mid January 2016 over the midday period:
Skippers: 1 Spendid Ochre and approx 6 different Grass and Small Skippers
Swallowtails: 1 male & 1 female Orchard Swallowtail, 3 Macleay's Swallowtails
Nymphs: 2 Australian Admirals, 1 Painted Lady, 1 Meadow Argus, 1 Milkweed, 2 Common Ringlets
Blues: approx 6 Grass Blues & 1 Imperial Hairstreak
Whites & Yellows: approx 30 Common Jezebels and 3 Cabbage Whites
If you wish to attract butterflies do not use pesticides in your garden as these will kill all insects - welcome and unwelcome, including butterfly caterpillars.
Out of interest here is a listing, made on our property, of butterfly sightings recorded in one hour in mid January 2016 over the midday period:
Skippers: 1 Spendid Ochre and approx 6 different Grass and Small Skippers
Swallowtails: 1 male & 1 female Orchard Swallowtail, 3 Macleay's Swallowtails
Nymphs: 2 Australian Admirals, 1 Painted Lady, 1 Meadow Argus, 1 Milkweed, 2 Common Ringlets
Blues: approx 6 Grass Blues & 1 Imperial Hairstreak
Whites & Yellows: approx 30 Common Jezebels and 3 Cabbage Whites
If you wish to attract butterflies do not use pesticides in your garden as these will kill all insects - welcome and unwelcome, including butterfly caterpillars.
As for beverages, nectar will suffice most butterflies but some also drink moisture from which they get minerals, like the Common Blue pictured drinking from our damp pavers after a summer rain shower. Others will drink from wet mud or sand (mud puddling) or sap oozing from trees and rotting fruit, etc.
It's not only the butterflies you need to cater for but their caterpillars as well. Each species will only eat their specific foodplant/s. The Caterpillar Foodplant page gives a list of the ones we are aware of in and around our property. The Butterfly pages also list their caterpillar foodplants. Some of these are easily grown in a garden; others are local forest plants.