hello gardeners I'm here to talk to you about something I'm very passionate about and that's butterfly gardening I love bringing wildlife into my garden but especially these wonderful jewels of color and flittering and it's just a lot of life that can bring your garden to life but the basics that you need for any creature that you're trying to attract your garden are what food shelter and water and but I'm going to start kind of in the reverse order with water a puddling station is a nice way to provide a safe place for butterflies to take a drink they need a little bit of sand in a tray and you fill it with a little bit of water and you have to keep it clean once in a while and I have a wonderful place to get a little drink the next thing is shelter and shelter can be provided with just a lush growth but also grasses give them a very safe place to grow so we have some varieties that are native grasses that do really well here they're very easy and they when they get nice and bushy they give them a safe place to get away from their predators and then next you have to think about food and there's a couple of ways you have to look at this there's the host plants and the larval plants and the host plants are for the larvae so when you want to draw a butterfly in New York Arden you have to provide them a way to feed their babies so you have lots of options but the first thing you have to remember is they're going to be chewing on your leaves and you will note use no pesticides you are not going to have perfect leaves in your garden so you can try things like the passion vine to draw the Gulf fritillary the pipevine that can do the pipevine Swallowtail milkweed which is the only plan to monarch can eat there are many butterflies that can eat just kind of universally all the plants but there are some that are very specific and then you'll need to go to the nectar plants for the adults and you have lots of choices for that you've got Pinta and yarrow and Lantana and one of the favorite that almost every butterfly will hover over when it's blooming they forget about everything else is the greg's mist flower and then all the salvias are wonderful butterfly plants there's the mealy blue sages and salvia Greggy eyes they're all wonderful color and butterflies will be very happy your garden and there's another plant that's kind of new to me that we just learned about this that's new to me this year but it's called a Kerry op turis and it is very drought tough after it's established it's a perennial but after last summer and seeing it thrive in other people's gardens over the summer it was wonderful and then another option you might want to try or some very colorful annuals like the zinnia which is a wonderful nectar plant for your butterflies you'll make them very happy and you'll put lots of pop in your garden they're a great way to bring color to your garden you want color you want flowering year-round so that the butterflies have food year-round so you'll be changing out a few things in some of these perennials you get fall bloomers spring bloomers but enjoy butterflies in your garden bring the wildlife in and do nature a favor for backyard basics this is Lyta Gus