Garden planning – giving butterflies a home

I’ve been saying for years we need to do something with the garden.  The wall needs a bit more compost or soil in so the flowers will be higher up and seen rather than sunken in the bottom of the wall.  We need storage for the outdoor toys and BBQ, last year’s tomato grobags need removing and tidying up, and we could really do with a border or something along the fence.  And then we still need to build the climbing frame which is still in its wrapping and boxes since it was delivered back in January.

But as I’m definitely not a fan of gardening, I’m thinking the little things might help, and to do things in stages.  We were offered a butterfly habitat to review, and as our paddock garden is still quite wild and barren (well, it’s just grass and overlooks fields), attracting more butterflies and having a little decorative house on the fence might be a start point.

The first step was finding my hammer and some nails to actually put up the butterfly habitat.

The house itself is really cute.  It looks like a tall version of a little bird house, and is really well made.  It’s also made sustainably from FSC certified timber.  The feeder section has special ultra violet paint to attract butterflies.

There’s an observation window at the side with a bit of perspex over, and inside there’s 2 pieces of dowling for perches.  We added a bit of buddleia twig inside for an extra perch.  There’s also a feeding plate which slots in the front.  In this we put the advised sugar and water solution – there are some tiny little holes for this, and on the larger feeding plate we put some fruit.  N chose a banana, although I think we’d have been better off putting a couple of different types on there.

Now, I know you’re saying to yourselves, what is she going on about, there won’t be butterflies around for ages, but there’s nothing like being prepared.  Plus it looks really great on the fence, and N had the chance to wield a hammer.

The last year we did have a lot of butterflies appear in our house for the first time.  I’m not sure where they’re getting in, but hopefully having this little butterfly house up outside will help keep them outside.  The location is important because it should be in a warmish spot, that’s fairly sheltered.  None of our garden is sheltered, and we get an awful lot of wind with it being open, but we nailed it to the fence the other side of next door’s buddleia bush.  Hopefully this will help encourage the butterflies, and being attached to the fence won’t be as windy as it might be elsewhere.

Once we get some butterflies it’ll be a great opportunity to teach N about the different butterflies.  When I was a child I was really hot on spotting and naming them, but I’ll probably need to reeducate myself to be able to teach him.

Now we’ve got our butterfly habitat up, ready and waiting, the next step in garden planning is getting organised to buy some storage for N’s bikes and other outdoor toys.  And finding one that the OH will like, given his picky tastes.

Do you have anything in your garden to attract wildlife?  What plans do you have for your garden this year?

———————————————————————

Disclosure: We received a Wildlife World butterfly habitat for the purpose of review. All words and opinions are my own.