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How To Attract Butterflies To Your Garden

killingsworth-how-to-attract-butterflies

Top Tips To Help You Attract Butterflies To Your Garden This Summer

Ah, summer. Is there anything better than a sunny day, a light breeze, and a garden in full bloom, filled with one of nature’s most delicate, graceful and colorful creatures?  The warmer months signal the arrival of butterflies in the Carolinas. These brightly colored insects can be a great addition to your garden, not only for their beauty, but also for their usefulness in pollinating flowers. Butterflies are known as beneficials, similar to other insects such as ladybugs. This means that they help your lawn or garden flourish, unlike harmful pests such as aphids and termites.  For those who enjoy butterfly watching, the summer is a fantastic time to attract butterflies to your garden. But attracting butterflies is more than just planting flowers! If you want butterflies in your lawn and garden, follow these helpful tips below. Before you know it, your garden will be fluttering with these breathtaking insects! 

Attract Butterflies To Your Garden With These 8 Tips 

Ready to learn what it takes to get your garden butterfly ready? Let’s get started!

1. Grow a variety of butterfly-attracting plants. 

To attract butterflies to your garden, you need a variety of plants butterflies love. These should include flowering plants that are native to your area as well as a variety of nectar plants that will provide food throughout different butterfly-active seasons.  Different types of butterflies depend on different plants to survive and reproduce. So be sure your plants are compatible with the needs of the butterflies in your area.  Just like us, butterflies have a few favorite foods. Here are some of the most common types of butterflies and the plants they enjoy the most:

  • Acmon Blue: buckwheat, lupines, milkvetch
  • American Painted Lady: cudweed, everlast
  • Black Swallowtail: parsley, dill, fennel common rue
  • Eastern Tiger Swallowtail: wild black cherry, ash, tulip tree, willow, sweetbay, basswood 
  • Gray Comma: gooseberry, azalea, elm
  • Great Spangled Fritillary: milkweed, thistle, ironweed, red clover, verbena, vetch 
  • Monarch: milkweeds
  • Painted Lady: thistles, mallows, nuevitas, yellow fiddleneck 
  • Pygmy Blue: saltbush, lamb’s quarters, pigweed
  • Silver-Spotted Skipper: locusts, wisteria, other legumes
  • Spicebush Swallowtail: sassafras, spicebush
  • Variegated Fritillary: passion flower, maypop, violets, stonecrop, purslane
  • Viceroy: willows, cottonwood, aspen
  • Zebra Swallowtail: pawpaw 

While gardening, remember to include these natural flavors and treats in your garden to attract butterflies!

2. Pay attention to plant type and color. 

Adult butterflies are attracted to red, yellow, purple, pink and orange flower blossoms. Flowers that have flat tops or are clustered and have short flower tubes allow easy access to the good stuff, too.  Butterflies don’t have mouths, only a long, straw-like tongue called a Proboscis. As they flit from flower to flower, they use their tongue to suck every bit of nectar from the inside of the flower, which is why it’s important to choose flowers with short nectar tubes. The easier it is for butterflies to drink the nectar, the more frequently they will return for more!

3. Plant nectar sources in full sun areas.

Butterflies like to enjoy the warmth of the sun, too—especially when they’re eating. Generally, the adult butterfly prefers to feed in the sun, so plants that are key nectar sources should receive full sun from mid-morning to mid-afternoon.  Keep in mind that not every plant will be able to receive this much sun! Choose plants that are labeled full sun or full sun to partial shade for the sunniest areas of your lawn or garden. 

4. Don’t use pesticides. 

If you’re looking to attract butterflies to your garden, steer clear of pesticides! Certain pesticides such as malathion, sevin, and diazinon will kill butterflies. While these types of pesticides may be useful in deterring other harmful insects, there are environmentally friendly ways to thwart pests while protecting beneficial insects like butterflies. We believe that pest control should always be safe and eco-friendly. To learn more about organic pest control, read our blog, Organic Pest Control: Techniques To Use Indoors and Out

5. Create a place for butterflies to rest. 

After a hearty feast of nectar, butterflies need a little R&R. Place flat stones in your garden to give the butterflies a place to rest and bask in the sun. Butterflies need the sun to warm their wings for flight.  While simple garden stones will do, decorating butterfly stones can be a fun activity for the whole family! Decorated stones will not only add more color to your garden, but also provide the perfect resting place for butterflies. 

6. Give them a place for puddling. 

Butterflies use wet sand and mud for drinking water and extracting minerals, which is called puddling. Creating a place for butterflies to puddle is easy, and will help attract butterflies to your garden.  Here are four steps to creating your own butterfly puddler:

  1. Find a shallow pan. You can place the pan on a stand, or simply lay it down in your garden (preferably in a sunny area).
  2. Add sand and small stones. The stones will give butterflies a place to land when drinking.
  3. Add water. You don’t want to flood the pan with water, but add just enough to keep the sand damp. 
  4. Refresh when needed. Check in on the pan to make sure there is enough water for the butterflies to drink.

However, if you don’t have the time to create your own butterfly puddler, there are plenty of options online you can purchase!

7. Don’t forget the caterpillars. 

Butterflies will not lay their eggs if there are no host plants for caterpillars to eat. Caterpillars strictly eat plants, known as host plants, while adult butterflies drink solely from nectar plants.  Many caterpillar species will only eat certain plants—if the plant is not available to them, they will die. Additionally, you don’t want caterpillars snacking on your other plants, so be sure to grow specific host plants for caterpillars to feed on. To attract butterflies to your garden, you need to give them a safe and caterpillar-friendly place to reproduce. 

8. Eliminate butterfly-deterring pests.

Keep in mind that certain pests can deter butterflies from entering your yard. Wasps, ants, birds, snakes, dragonflies, and parasitic flies are all a threat to butterflies.  Be sure to keep an eye out for these insects, and contact your local pest control expert to effectively remove these pests from your lawn and garden!

Successfully Attracted Butterflies To Your Garden? Here’s How To Make Them Stick Around

Once you’ve established your butterfly sanctuary using the tips above, it’s important to keep it properly maintained! Use these techniques to keep your garden fluttering with butterflies all season long. 

Keep your wilted plants around. 

Don’t trim off any dead flower heads or dead foliage—you may accidentally remove butterfly eggs or pupating butterflies. 

If you feel the need to trim, designate one or two host plants that will remain untouched. 

Do your best to leave the butterfly nectar plants and caterpillar host plants alone. Remove and relocate any caterpillars that have found a home elsewhere to these plants. 

Let Mother Nature do what she does best. 

The best butterfly gardens are those that are allowed to grow naturally. Let your plants grow and bloom without interference. 

Attract Butterflies To Your Garden With Killingsworth’s Expert Help

Ready to make your garden a butterfly destination? Great! With a little bit of work and maintenance, you’ll be seeing butterflies in no time. And remember, if you need help preparing your lawn or garden for beneficial insects like butterflies, we can help.  While renowned for their beauty, butterflies, like bees, are key to pollinating and maintaining our ecosystem. By attracting butterflies to your garden, you’re doing your part to positively impact our environment! Here at Killingsworth, we value our environment which is why we take pride in offering organic lawn and pest services that protect you and your family. When it comes to keeping harmful pests at bay, trust our team of experts to get the job done in the safest possible way! For safe and sustainable home maintenance, schedule a service with us today.

How To Attract Butterflies To Your Garden

Bedbug inspection

How to Know if Your Hotel Has Bedbugs

Upon entering a hotel room, do you typically reach for the tiny toiletries, take a leap onto the bed, or perhaps start by inspecting for bed bugs? Knowing what to look for is essential. Anticimex Carolinas Service Manager Christian Tweed has shared valuable insights on identifying bed bugs in your hotel room and preventing them from hitching a ride back home with you. And if bed bugs do become an unexpected part of your vacation, remember that Clark’s Pest Control is here to assist!



Q&A with a Pest Professional


How do bed bugs get inside hotels?


Bed bugs are primarily hitchhiking insects as opposed to foraging ones, meaning that they get carried around on people’s clothes and belongings. Someone with an active infestation in their home can easily bring bed bugs to their hotel, but they can also be picked up during travel (airplanes, taxis, and rideshare services) and brought to a hotel room.


What do people misunderstand about bed bugs in hotels?


From a probability standpoint, all hotels will deal with bed bugs at some point in time. If you think about a bed bug’s method of travel, there’s literally nothing a hotel can do to stop them from being carried in. What I have realized is that luxury hotels are more likely to have an aggressive response to dealing with a bed bug case once it’s identified as they tend to have a higher quality of service and a reputation to protect. While this isn’t always the case, it has been my experience more often than not.

Got bedbugs? Call Clark’s at 866-781-4991 today!

What do you recommend travelers do when they get to their room to check for bed bugs?


Most hotel headboards hang directly on the wall. I start my inspection here before even looking at the bed itself. I have found bed bugs, their exoskeletons, and the telltale black stains they leave behind around the edges of or in the crevices of headboards. If the headboard looks clean, move on to looking over the pillowcases and comforter for any signs or stains. You can dig into the bedding as deep as you want here, but I encourage people to look over the top layer of things at the very least.


What are some lesser-known signs of bed bugs in your hotel room?


The specifics of the black stains they leave behind, which as gross as it sounds, are just digested blood as that’s all that bed bugs feed on. If the stains are on a hard surface, they will be small dots as if left behind by an ink pen and will smear into a brownish gray when moisture is applied. If they’re on fabric, they will usually bleed along the fibers making a small diamond, square or X shape.


If there are bed bugs in your hotel room, can they travel home with you?


They absolutely can, however this is easy to prevent. While staying in a hotel, keep as much of your clothing and luggage off the beds as possible. Storing suitcases in the bathroom might sound odd, but it’s an effective method of prevention.

Don’t tackle bedbugs yourself, call Clark’s at 866-781-4991!

What should you do with your suitcase if you suspect your hotel has bed bugs?


When arriving home from a trip, leave your luggage in the garage or on a porch and bring your clothes in one load of laundry at a time. If the clothes are dirty, wash them like you normally would, if they’re clean then run them through the dryer for at least forty-five minutes. Once your suitcase is empty, vacuum over it meticulously (don’t forget to empty the vacuum when you’re done), or if you’re in the right climate, expose it to heat for a few days by placing it in your vehicle (parked in the sun) or for a few weeks in your attic.


The Clark’s Solution


If you brought bed bugs back to you home, Clark’s is here to help. Our Bedbug Control service is designed to eliminate bedbugs and create a safe, comfortable environment.


A Clark’s Pest Professional will do an inspection and recommend a plan of attack to get rid of bed bugs now and prevent them from hatching in the future. Call Clark’s at 866-781-4991 today for more information.




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