When my older son was in 3rd grade, his class planted a bunch of milkweeds, and they watched as a few caterpillars formed into chrysalises and then into butterflies and they learned all about that process.  It was so cool, and all the kids loved it.  This year one of his 6th grade classes did the same thing.  We’ve been talking about planting a butterfly garden of our own for a LONG time (probably since 3rd grade and now he just finished 6th!!! Slacker mom here).  Well,  we finally did it.  It was a perfect summer project to get both of my boys off their devices and out of the house, although only one boy really helped me do the work, as you’ll see in the video below.

We weren’t looking to grow butterflies, although if that happens it will be a bonus.  We just wanted to plant a bunch of flowers that attract butterflies.  I had all these old pots laying around and the perfect spot to put them all, sooooooo…..

Here is How to Plant a Butterfly Garden…

First Stop, Lowes…

I took the kids to Lowes to pick out some butterfly attracting plants.  We had a list of flowers/plants with us that we found online, but didn’t have much luck finding many on the list.  We asked an employee and she steered us in the right direction.

Here are the flowers we ended up with….

Dark Blue Moody Blues Speedwell
Mesa Red Blanket Flower
Purslane (Portulaca)
Purslane Pazzaz Nano
Hummingbird Bush
Porterweed
Euryops

Other Supplies We Used…

I also picked up a can of this spray paint so I could paint the large black pots you see below.  They used to be blue, but the paint chipped off from the extreme heat and sun here in Florida.  This spray paint is AMAZING.  I only needed one coat and then some touching up.  Look how pretty they came out.  I love the color.

We also purchased 6 of these pavers from Lowes so we could make a tier effect.

Once home, we got to work…

First, I leveled the area with a bow rake and picked any weeds I saw.  Second, I put down the pavers and made sure they were somewhat level.  Third, we got to work on re-potting all our new flowers.  Unfortunately, we ran out of soil and needed to buy one more plant, so we headed back to Lowes.  While there, we also bought 2 bags of landscaping rocks to pretty up the area.  (See time lapse video below.)

When we got home from our second trip to Lowes, we finished re-potting, arranged the flowers to color coordinate, and then laid the rocks down all around the plants.  Very simple and easy but looks pretty, don’t ya think?

Here are a few close ups of some of the flowers we purchased.

That is pretty much it!  Easy peasy!  You can obviously plant the flowers right into the ground if you don’t have a bunch of pots laying around.

Now, where are you butterflies?  Come on by for a drink of our sweet nectar!  I actually saw a few butterflies flying around the area while I was taking these pictures.  They were being shy though and didn’t stop to say hi.  They my have been scoping it out and plan to stop by for a drink later.  Hopefully.  I’ll keep ya posted.

We finally had a visitor!  Check it out.  

Check out this time lapse video my son created for me with his Go Pro.  Not the best quality, but we’ll get better at it.  This is my first video on my new YouTube channel called, the House house blog!  Please subscribe.