ARTICLE | Attract butterflies to your garden

You cannot do without caterpillars... butterflies enhance the garden's aesthetic and contribute to pollination. Many garden owners, therefore, try to attract butterflies to their gardens.

There are many instructions on how to do this. Unfortunately, the advice is usually limited to which plants to place in gardens. The flowers of many garden perennials and shrubs are popular with butterflies. For example, lavenders, catnips, Dianthus species, Clematis species, and especially the various butterfly bush cultivars (Buddleja davidii). These are undoubtedly charming plants that decorate the garden and attract butterflies. Gardeners try to help butterflies by planting such plants, but they often forget that the caterpillars need to feed somewhere for adult butterflies to emerge. That is especially a problem in big cities.

The famous English lawns are a barren desert for insects in terms of pollination. Unlike the desert, such a lawn takes a great deal of energy and water to grow well. The grass is a pleasant place to relax and for children to play, but the question is whether it must be everywhere.

During their long evolution, butterfly caterpillars have adapted to the plants that grow in their area. Many of them feed on more than one plant species, but they do not eat the leaves of plants that come from other continents. A diverse community of native plants in the landscape is essential for butterflies to thrive. We can help butterflies in cities and in our gardens. Transform part of your garden into a flowering meadow and leave a bit of the garden to “weeds". You will save yourself a lot of work and you can also enjoy the butterflies flying around. Flowering meadow seeds for different habitats are commercially available.

Expensive landscaping projects are often carried out in the city and then there is no money to maintain them. Beautiful and expensive landscaping then dries up, becomes overgrown with weeds, and is not a pretty sight. Planting flowering meadows and native tree species is a suitable alternative. It will benefit municipal budgets, attract butterflies and other pollinators, and it will also bring birds into the cities.

Enjoy the butterflies fully in the Fata Morgana Greenhouse during the butterfly exhibition held from April 7 to May 21, 2023.