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As the legend goes, If anyone desires a wish to come true they must first capture a butterfly and whisper that wish to it. Since a butterfly can make no sound, the butterfly can not reveal the wish to anyone. In gratitude for giving the butterfly its freedom, the wish is granted. Always give the butterfly its freedom for your wishes to come true.

Plant A Butterfly Garden This Year

Butterflies add beauty, color and movement to a garden. When designing your garden to attract butterflies:

• Plant large masses of individual flowers, rather than single flowers scattered here and there. This large splash of blossoms beckons butterflies by sight and smell.
• Locate your garden in full sun but protected from strong winds by a fence or living windbreak.
• Butterflies need water, but prefer to drink from mud puddles rather than from deeper water. You can easily supply this needed water by filling a shallow basin with clean sand and keeping it flooded.
• Because butterflies are cold-blooded, they need to bask in the sun to warm up enough to fly. Provide them with flat rocks for sunning.

The winged form is just one stage of their life cycle; the other is a caterpillar stage. A butterfly’s main mission in life is to mate and lay eggs, which hatch into caterpillars. Usually living for about two weeks, the female butterfly lays eggs on the undersides of a host plant—usually a different type of plant than it feeds on for nectar.

The eggs hatch in a few days into tiny larvae, which mature into caterpillars. The caterpillars live for several weeks, growing ever larger and eating the foliage or flowers of the host plant. When the caterpillar stops feeding, it goes through a metamorphosis, forming a saclike chrysalis with a pupa inside.

The pupa transforms itself from a caterpillar into a winged butterfly to continue the life cycle. Some butterflies go through several generations in a single season before hibernating or migrating for winter.

• To keep the most butterflies in you garden you need to supply a food source for the caterpillars, because most butterflies fly no more than several hundred yards from where they emerged from their chrysalis.
• Attracting butterflies to your garden also means tolerating the damage they can do as larvae. It’s better to us insecticides only when a serious pest occurs, and then only on the affected plants. You can handpick destructive caterpillars off your flowers and vegetables if you wish to spare the butterflies.
• You can also plant plenty for both you and the caterpillars, covering your share with fine netting to prevent egg-laying.

The more serious you get about butterfly gardening, the more you will want to consult field guides to determine which species are in our area, and then plant the specific host and nectar plants to attract them.

Meanwhile, planting masses of the flowers listed here will get your gardens started on the road to becoming a Mecca for butterflies.

Plants that attract butterflies are available at Pendletons!

We'll be more than happy to discuss a plan for your butterfly garden! Just come on out and look around at the great selection of plants in our greenhouse!