Steps to creating a Butterfly Garden

When we think of butterfly gardens, we tend to think of lots of nectar plants for adult butterflies, but to have a successful garden for butterflies there is much more to it than that. Every garden needs pollinators, bees are among the best. Without them there would be limited flowers and even fewer fruits and vegetables. Since bees add more than a soothing buzzing sound, it's worth putting some thought into making your garden inviting for them.

You need to understand the Life Cycles of Butterflies so that you can plan for all of their needs.  You want Nectar Plants to bring Butterflies to your garden and Host Plants to keep them there

Butterflies go through four distinctive stages throughout their lives: egg, larva (caterpillar), pupa (chrysalis), and adult butterfly.

During the egg stage the butterfly will develop into a caterpillar, which hatches and must immediately begin feeding on its host plant. The adult female is smart enough to lay her eggs on or near just the right plant so that baby caterpillars will have everything that they need when they hatch from the egg.

Life Span of a Butterfly - The life span of a butterfly is dependent on the breed. They can live only a few days, anything up to a year, depending on the species. The copper butterfly and small blue butterfly are generally thought to have the shortest life span and only live up to a maximum of a few days. The longest life span is that of the migrating monarch butterfly, which can live up to 12 months. The purposed average life span of an adult butterfly (not caterpillar or pupa) is 20-40 days or 3-6 weeks.

In the USA, adult monarchs live 2-6 weeks if they are in the first 3 generations of butterflies in the year. The 4th generation can live up to eight months because they have to do a long migration.