Plants for Butterflies

One of my plans this year was to attract more Butterflies to our garden. We are very lucky and already have a very wildlife friendly garden with wild creatures spilling in from neighbouring hedgerows, fields and woodlands. For the past 13 years we have planted hedges, gardened organically (zero chemicals) and provided food, fresh water and shelter for insects, birds and mammals. Despite all our efforts we have noticed that the number of visiting Butterflies has been falling each year. Declining numbers of Butterflies seems to be a UK wide problem for a variety of reasons ranging from adverse weather conditions to loss of habitat and food plants for adults and caterpillars.

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Attracting Butterflies

I’ve been skipping about today because the sun is shining and we have gorgeous butterflies in the garden. Butterflies feed on lots of different types of plants but seem to love these nectar rich flowers in particular. They cluster together on our Buddleja shrubs which have thousands of tiny flowers full of nectar.

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