The Butterfly Garden

by Sandi OReilly

Title

The Butterfly Garden

Artist

Sandi OReilly

Medium

Mixed Media - Mixed Media Photograph, Painting Digital Art

Description

This image is one of Abbie Shores corner of her amazing garden she has given to me to edit for Abbie Shored Edit This 46. Thank you, Abbie, for sharing your awesome garden with me!! I love butterflies and know she does as well, so I looked up the butterflies she has in her area as well as plants for butterflies and added them in by painting first and then digital painting the whole image. I learned so much from the research to see what types of butterflies they have in northern UK England, and they have several that we don't have in the US. I love the Adonis Blue!! Also checked butterfly bushes and plants that they like and found some differences there. Butterflies I used are adonis blue, orange tip, queen of spain fritilary, brimstone, green hairstreak and white wood. Plants were marjoram, buddieja,stinging nettles, common lilac. Butterflies are cold blooded and must be warm in order to fly. Many butterflies must have temperatures greater than 65F or higher to fly so they use the sun to warm themselves. It is not surprising then that most butterfly nectar plants are sun-loving plants.

When it comes to host plants, there are more varieties that will tolerate some (or a lot) of shade. So, plan your flowering nectar plants for the sunny areas and some of the host plants will fit nicely into your part-shade or shady areas. If you can manage to find at least 6 hours of good sunlight in parts of your yard then that will open your choices of nectar plants (and host plants) considerably.

If, however, you live in a very shady area then all is not lost. There are some varieties of butterflies that actually prefer shady, wooded areas and not-surprisingly, these butterflies do not rely on flower nectar as their main food source. Instead they are more attracted to rotting fruit, dung, tree-sap, etc.

I do not have experience with butterfly gardens in very shaded areas, but if that was what I was working with, I would aim more towards planting the host plants that like shade (Dutchman’s Pipevine, Lindera benzoin), using butterfly fruit feeders rather than relying solely on nectar plants, and trying a few shade-loving nectar plants such as Sweet Joe Pye Weed, Cut-leaf toothwort (Cardamine diphylla), Canada lily (Lilium canadense), and Bee balm (Monarda fistulosa). Fine Art Editing Painting Digital Painting by Sandi OReilly, all Rights Reserved and Copyrighted in the US and Internationally. Abbie Shores has given me all rights to sell, use her image in any way, thank you, Abbie. No use of this image without my written permission.

Uploaded

April 23rd, 2021

Colors

Embed

Share

Tags