If you want to attract butterflies to your garden then the best way to do that is by providing a source of food. Colorful flowers will also do the trick as well but if you want to help butterflies thrive then food and shelter are your best options. Here is how you can set up some butterfly feeders right in your own backyard.
The Right Plants
In order to attract butterflies into your yard you want to have some brightly colored flowers in every shade possible. If you have the space to allow for part of the garden to grow wild then throw some seeds down is an area that gets sun but is protected from the wind. Single flowers are better as it makes it easier for them to gather nectar.
Make Some Puddles
You can actually make an artificial puddle rather than trying to flood your yard. All you need is a shallow dish buried to the rim in the ground and you throw in a little bit of sand. Now you can add some fruit juice to attract the butterflies.
Add a Food Source
Butterflies love rotting fruit, if you have any kind of fruit tree in the yard then you can just leave the fallen fruit on the ground and they will get to it. You can use overripe fruit from the kitchen, just let it get really mushy. Bananas that are nearly black are perfect, you can even throw them into your freezer until you are ready to use them.
You can make a feeder for butterflies similar to the way you do for birds. Just use a very shallow dish and hang it from a tree branch like you would a hanging flower pot. Put some colorful flowers around to catch their eye. You can add mushy fruit to the dish, but you are going to want to make sure that it stays moist you may have to keep adding water or fruit juice to it. Butterflies won’t touch anything that has been dried out.
Sugar Water
If you really don’t want rotting fruit in the yard since it can attract pests as well as butter flies then you can try adding some sugar water instead. Add one part sugar to four parts water and boil. Let it cool and you can put it outside in a feeder with brightly colored flowers around. This will also help bees as well as butterflies. If you don’t want to leave water out in a dish then soak a sponge in your sugar water ad hang it near your flowers.