This butterfly garden was planned for this area as one directly to support butterflies in the garden in a very specific way – all the plants chosen support butterflies and are perennials or shrubs.
Ways I’ll check my butterfly garden credentials this winter:
A great test of your garden’s green credentials is how attractive your patch is to butterflies. To test your garden’s value to wildlife why not participate in Butterfly Conservation Ireland’s National Garden Butterfly Survey? The survey period runs from March to November during the flight period of our butterflies. At the end of November send your completed survey form (available to download here; click National Garden Butterfly Survey) to Butterfly Conservation Ireland and you will receive a report on the season’s findings in which your garden’s butterflies will form an important part. If you need help to identify any butterfly please click on “Butterflies/Gallery” on this website where all Ireland’s butterfly species are pictured.
How can you improve your garden for Butterflies?
Think of your garden as a service station for passing butterflies. To get them to visit you must provide an abundance of nectar-rich flowers growing in sunny, sheltered situations. Valuable flowers include Buddleia Buddleia davidii, Ice-plant Sedum spectabile, Red Clover Trifolium pratense, Common Marjoram Origanum vulgare, Common Knapweed Centurea nigra and Devil’s-bit Scabious Succisa pratensis.
To persuade your visitors to stay and breed you need to provide plants that their caterpillars feed on. The caterpillars eat leaves and some eat berries of specific plants. To the butterflies that are likely to visit your garden valuable larval foodplants include wild grasses such as Cock’s-foot Grass Dactylisglomerata, Common Bird’s-foot-trefoil Lotuscorniculatus, Stinging Nettle, Urtica dioica, Lady’s Smock, also known as Cuckooflower Cardamine pratensis and Garden Nasturtium Tropaeleum majus. Common Holly Ilex aquifolium and Common Ivy Hedera helix are also important plants. Caterpillar foodplants need to be located in sunny positions. If your garden offers food for the adult butterflies and their larvae as well as plenty of warmth and shelter you may even succeed in persuading these beautiful creatures to stay with you all year round.
Plants I’ve sown in the garden are listed below:
– Buddleja dav. ‘Pink Delight’
– Buddleja dav. ‘Empire Blue’
– Buddleja dav. ‘Royal Red’
– Ceanothus imp. ‘Victoria’
– Verbena bonariensis
– Allium ‘Millenium’
– Scabiosa ‘Butterfly Blue’
– Hebe ‘Pink Candy’
– Erysimum ‘Bowles Mauve’
– Sedum Herbstfreude (Autumn Joy)
– Leucanthemum ‘Banana Cream’
– Achillea ‘Moonshine’
Interesting facts about butterflies
Some butterflies make sounds from inside the chrysalis to scare off predators. They do this by rubbing together different sections of their bodies.
Some butterflies leave the chrysalis after only a few weeks but others hibernate for up to a year, waiting for conditions to be right.
Inside its chrysalis, the caterpillar starts to change into a butterfly.
Its eyes grow larger, its legs grow longer and it develops new muscles for flight.
Caterpillars have clever ways of staying safe. Some caterpillars eat plants that make them toxic to predators. Other caterpillars look a bit like bird poo, which means birds don’t want to eat them.
While humans have around 640-850 muscles in their bodies, caterpillars have about 4,000.
They move by tightening the muscles in their back segments, pushing blood to the front and stretching their bodies forwards.
A butterfly egg has many enemies.Laying eggs in a clump can be a good thing for some butterflies, as the eggs in the middle are more likely to survive and become caterpillars.
The female butterfly takes great care to find the right place to lay her eggs – on or near the caterpillar’s favourite food plant.
A caterpillar can become a tasty snack for a squirrel.
The skin’s the thing to grow bigger, the caterpillar must get rid of its old skin when it becomes too tight. Some caterpillars eat nearly non-stop and grow so much they have to change their skin five times.