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Green Acres Landscaping Resource Center

How to Landscape Vibrant, Successful Northern Virginia Butterfly Gardens

Looking to add color, fun, and excitement to your Northern Virginia landscape? There’s no better way to create an enjoyable outdoor space than by creating a butterfly garden! With a little planning, you can create an amazing garden to attract the more than 100 species of butterflies found in Northern Virginia.

The first step toward creating a butterfly garden is choosing the right flowers and plants. You’ll need to plant both nectar plants and larval host plants in order to encourage butterflies to make your garden a sanctuary for feeding, laying their eggs, and multiplying. Nectar plants provide adult butterflies with food, while larval host plants feed caterpillars. Choosing a wide range of both types of plants will encourage a greater variety of butterfly species to visit your garden. And plant as many flowers as possible to attract the most butterfly attention, as it’s much easier for butterflies to see mass plantings of the same flowers in one space. Butterflies feed from spring through fall, so know that a successful butterfly garden requires planting for continuous blooms.

When choosing nectar plants, know that butterflies are attracted to fragrant, bright flowers and plants that provide a landing platform. Look for purple, white, blue and white flowers that have many tiny flowers together in one flower head, which allows the butterfly to take in plenty of nectar at one time. However, avoid double flowers, and instead choose single-flowered or natives whenever possible, as these varieties offer more nectar. Native Northern Virginia nectar flowers include asters, blazing star, butterfly bush, goldenrods, and purple coneflower, among many others, while larval host plants native to Northern Virginia include clovers, violets, pansies, and many native grasses.

When choosing a butterfly garden site, be sure that space can offer both shade and sun, as well as protection from the wind. Cold-blooded butterflies flock to sunny locations because they need the warmth. Include a flat rock or bare spot for butterflies to bask in the sun, as well as damp spots of soil and sand from which butterflies can obtain moisture, as they are unable to drink pure standing water. Furthermore, avoid mowing around the butterfly garden, as a mowed area does not offer sufficient protection for butterflies.

Making careful plant selections and creating a sheltered, sunny location leads to an ideal butterfly garden that will attract many different types of Northern Virginia butterfly varieties. Look for your new backyard residents on warm, sunny days between mid-April and mid-October. And for landscape and hardscape services for your Northern Virginia home, look no further than Green Acres Landscaping and Masonry, serving Annandale, Chantilly, McLean, Springfield, and many other Northern Virginia communities.

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Green Acres Landscaping is a full service landscape design company, serving both residential and commercial clients in the Northern Virginia area since 1992. Our experienced team is ready to help you with any landscaping project, large or small.

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