Your garden of live butterflies doesn’t have to be entirely natural. Yes, you want to be sure that you have all the right plants and flowers to attract butterflies. Yes, you want to be sure that just-hatched butterflies have some safe quarters and sustenance.
But don’t be afraid to liven up your garden with some artificial butterflies – even some butterfly garden stakes.
Garden stakes – to be distinguished from traditional stakes holding up tomatoes, say – are decorative accents that can liven up your garden. Over time, they have become more and more popular as gardeners look for ways to enhance the natural beauty of the garden, yards, and overall exterior landscape.
The basic premise is that you have a stake – generally iron or a similar metal – and atop it is a decorative element. There are butterfly garden stakes, hummingbird garden stakes, and even stakes with wrought iron bird nests on them, stakes that can literally serve as a home for birds.
The nice thing about garden stakes is that they are all-weather decorations. You don’t have to pull the in the rain, or worry that too much wind and sunlight will overly wear away at it. That might be true of wind spinners and wind socks, but not garden stakes.
And when your butterfly garden is more or less past its prime – when the Monarchs raised at home have begun their migration south and west, when the blossoms on your butterfly bush are growing heavy and dry and falling to the earth – your garden stake will be standing tall and colorful!
Garden stakes can also be very practical. How about a stake with a sun whose face is thermometer? That’s a great way to figure out temperatures and begin tracking what butterflies are visiting your garden in what weather.
A decorative garden stake – even on with a whimsical butterfly decoration on it – can also have a rain guage.
Don’t rule out the possibility of creating your own garden stakes, either. Many families and classrooms find they are a great way to add a degree of artistic flair to your garden.
It’s easy as a butterfly gardener to believe that the only decoration your garden needs is a Yellow Tiger Swallowtail or a Monarch or some other live butterfly. But there are lots of ways that you can integrate beauty and artistic décor into your garden. Keep an open mind. One of these days you might even find yourself appreciating a butterfly perched a top a model of itself!
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