Grow A Butterfly Garden

It’s wonderful to watch butterflies fluttering around the garden and great for kids to understand the lifecycle of a caterpillar turning into a butterfly.

Butterflies love visiting flowers that are rich in sugary nectar and are particularly fond of brightly coloured flowers. It’s a great idea to grow plants in your garden that flower at different times of the year and include a range of flowering plants to attract a wider variety of butterflies. Butterflies can also help pollinate flowers and some vegetables and fruit and nut trees, so they’re fantastic garden helpers too.

Butterfly attracting plants can be grown in a sunny garden and also in pots on balconies and patios and both the flowers and the butterflies will put a smile on your face!

An easy way to grow a patch of flowers that butterflies will love is to sow a packet of Yates Butterfly Beneficial Insect Mix seed. This mix contains a vibrant blend of nectar rich flowers to attract and provide food for butterflies and also food for caterpillars.

Here are the simple steps to create a butterfly garden with Yates Butterfly Field seed mix:

1. Choose a bare sunny spot in the garden and dig some Yates Dynamic Lifter® Soil Improver & Plant Fertiliser into the soil.

2. Scatter the seed thinly over the soil and rake lightly into the surface. Firm down, water gently and keep moist throughout the germination period.

3. Tiny seedlings will emerge in 10-21 days.

4. Water the flower patch regularly and feed with liquid fertiliser like Yates Thrive® Roses & Flowers Liquid Plant Food to help the plants grow and encourage lots of colourful flowers.

5. You’ll start to see the first flowers after around 10 weeks, though results will vary depending on the climate and time of year.

Other flowering plants that butterflies love include butterfly bush (Buddleja), sunflowers, lavender, pentas, daisies and Australian native plants like grevilleas, wattles and bottlebrush.

So grow some butterfly attracting flowers at your place and enjoy watching these beautiful insects when they visit your garden.