My Butterfly Garden

The best way to be sure which butterfly you are seeing is to purchase a guide to American butterflies that has lots of photographs! I have been watching butterflies for years, and I could never be sure until my mother in law gave me a butterfly guide for my birthday one year. It has really increased my enjoyment of watching the butterflies that visit my garden!

The American butterflies can be found from coast to coast, and from the mountains to the sea. Many of these butterflies can be attracted to our gardens by planting the flowers that they use for nectar, or host plants that they use to lay their eggs on. Although some of the butterflies are regional and you will only be able to spot them if you do a lot of traveling.

American butterflies are as varied as the plants that attract them. However, if a butterfly is native to the west coast it would not be likely to be found on the east coast. It would not matter if you planted its favorite plant. But that’s okay, because all the butterflies that visit my butterfly garden are special to me!

There are so many butterflies that visit my garden, I have enough to do to identify all of them! So far I have seen,  the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, the Black Swallowtail, the Monarch, the  Great Fritillary, White Cabbage Butterfly, the tiny Spring Azure, the Pearl Crescent and several Skippers that tend to move so fat I can hardly see their wings to identify then! There are others that I haven’t exactly identified yet, it seems some  American butterflies very closely resemble others and you have to get close to be able to tell the difference.