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| © Dawn Gagnon Photography 2013 |
Butterflies are lovely little garden visitors that help pollinate your flowers and vegetables. Attracting them to your garden is easy if you plant plenty of flowers they love and follow a few simple tips. South Carolina is home to many varieties of wild flowers and butterflies. See this list below to attract them to your garden.
- Avoid using too much pesticides. Even though we love butterflies they are an insect and as such are vulnerable to the same pesticides all insects are. Use natural and organic means of pest control when possible and be mindful of those that kill caterpillars.
- Plant flowering shrubs, trees and vegetables in groups to help bees and butterflies pollinate easily. This also creates a grand impact visually as well.
- Allow for some naturally blooming wild areas in your garden. While you may not think it an attractive area of the garden, you can always add to a wild section of a yard by adding additional wild flowers to it. Butterflies in particular need an undisturbed area to make nests for a butterfly friendly environment to flourish. If needed, add butterfly houses to your garden area.
- Flowers that produce great quantities of nectar are more likely to have your garden teaming with butterflies. Flowers such as Peacock Butterfly Bush, Coreopsis, Asters, Phlox and many others are especially attractive to butterflies.
- Have a decorative dish with damp, water logged soil in the garden. Be sure to keep it damp with water as butterflies will drink from this. They do not drink from standing water.
- Lovely rocks and garden sculptures in the garden make ideal places for butterflies to rest. An added bonus to attracting butterflies is that in most cases the same things attract hummingbirds as well.
