Have Your Own Butterfly Garden on Your RV Patio

Many RVers enjoy keeping small gardens in or around their RV as they travel. Butterfly gardens are particularly enjoyable because they lure these lovely creatures which are so beautiful to watch. You can plant butterfly friendly plants to draw these lovely creatures to you wherever you roam.

The first thing you need to do is choose plants that produce nectar for the butterflies and provide continuous blooms through the summer.  The most important time to have blooms is mid to late summer.  This is when most butterflies are most active.  Flowers that produce multiple blooms on a single plant and contain a lot of nectar are best.

Some perennials are very good for attracting butterflies.  Lilac and asters are favorites for butterfly gardens.  Cornflowers are a lovely wildflower that butterflies adore.  Herbs such as parley, dill, and mint provide nectar as well.

You can make homemade butterfly feeders from small jars, such as baby food jars.  You just drill a hole in the middle of the lid and stuff it with cotton.  Then you fill the jar with a mixture of 1:9 sugar and water. (1 part sugar and 9 parts water) Then you can decorate the jar with brightly colored bits of felt to attract the butterflies to it.  Hang it somewhere in your garden and the butterflies will come suck the “nectar” out through the cotton in the lid.

In addition to providing plants that will feed the butterflies and their larva, you’ll need to be sure your yard is hospitable in other ways.  Butterflies need a bit of shelter for their eggs.  You’ll need to provide some sort of windbreak around your butterfly garden, so the butterflies can lay their eggs in an area where wind won’t harm them.

Butterflies like to gather at the edges of puddles, so you’ll need to provide at least one for them. You should also be sure not to use too many pesticides around your garden. These poisons can kill butterfly larva, and they can also harm the butterflies themselves.  It doesn’t take a lot of insecticide to kill these delicate creatures.  Insecticides can kill delicate caterpillars before they have a chance to grow into butterflies.

Some butterfly larva can look remarkably similar to common garden pests, and although butterfly larvae do feed on plants, they don’t typically eat enough to do any real damage.  So be sure your identification is correct before you spray.