Tips for Attracting Hummingbirds and Butterflies

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If you wonder how to make a butterfly garden or how to make a hummingbird garden, you are not alone. Check out these easy tips for attracting butterflies and hummingbirds to your garden.

Attracting Hummingbirds and Butterflies

Watching butterflies and hummingbirds fly around your garden is very relaxing and they are quite fun to watch. But how do you get them to come to your garden and stay around for a bit?

Water Source

Both butterflies and hummingbirds need fresh water every day to keep doing their job - pollinating flowers and vegetables. Hummingbirds prefer a bird bath that has moving water like what you would find in a fountain.

Butterflies on the other hand like standing water, such as what is found in a bucket or a pond. After a rainfall, it is not uncommon to see butterflies having a little party on the puddles - be careful not to step on them!

This DIY fountain is easy to add to your garden.

Plants that Attract Butterflies and Hummingbirds

Planting flowers and vegetables for the butterflies and hummingbirds is essential to getting them to come to your garden. They both are big fans of Butterfly Bush, Cornflower, Delphinium, Foxglove, Phlox, and Petunias as well as squash plants, tomatoes, and thyme.

Hummingbirds like tubular flowers that they can stick their long nose and tongue into and get nectar out of. Butterflies like flowers that they can land on and gather the pollen onto their legs. Provide both kinds of plants so that both butterflies and hummingbirds stick around and call your garden their home.

Provide Shelter

Hummingbirds are often hunted by larger birds and prey. They need to rest throughout the day as they expel a lot of energy flying around. They tend to find shelter in large bushes and medium-sized trees that have a lot of branches and leaves that can hide their small little bodies.

Butterflies look for shelter in low hanging plants and branches and can also camouflage themselves to the shade of a tree's bark. They rest peacefully against the tree while no one is looking.

By following these easy steps to provide a place to rest and out of harms way, a safe drinking spot, and food for their little bodies, you will have butterflies and hummingbirds in your garden all summer long.