Your Yard Will Be Full Of Butterflies After Planting This Beautiful Ground Cover

Butterflies are an essential component of ecosystems around the world and in your backyard. First and foremost, they help flowers exchange pollen, a necessary step for growing many fruits, vegetables, and ornamental plants. Landscaping your yard with butterfly-friendly plants helps nearby flora thrive and promotes biodiversity in your neighborhood. If you're seeking a fast-growing flower that will turn your yard into a butterfly paradise, miniature mat daisy (Bellium minutum) should be in the running. This plant forms carpets of white-petaled flowers and shiny oval leaves that stay close to the ground, minimizing weeds and soil erosion while attracting pollinators. In other words, it's an ideal ground cover for butterfly lovers.

With deep-green foliage that stays vibrant all year and flowers that bloom throughout the summer months, miniature mat daisies offer lots of visual appeal to your yard and plenty of nectar-sipping opportunities for butterflies. This plant is also good at bringing bees to gardens and other natural areas that need pollinators' help. It's simple to grow in USDA hardiness zones 5 through 9, and it doesn't need much water once it's established. This can lower your utility bills while making your yard more eco-friendly. Plus, miniature daisy is fire resistant, which can make your property safer if you live in a region that experiences wildfires. It even tolerates pollution, so you can grow it in urban areas that could use a butterfly boost.

Miniature daisy performs best when it's planted during warm spring weather. The air temperature should stay above 50 degrees Fahrenheit at night and rise to 70 degrees or so during the day. Though miniature daisy is not a particularly thirsty plant, it grows fast and strong if it's watered every few days, ultimately reaching a height of 2 to 4 inches. To create a ground cover with miniature daisies, place individual specimens about a foot apart and let them reseed so you don't have to plant more the following year. Choose soil that drains well since daisies are prone to rot when their roots sit in stagnant water.

For maximum butterfly appeal, grow your miniature daisy ground cover in a sunny part of your yard. Miniature daisies will grow in heavy shade but prefer spots with at least four hours of direct sunlight each day. Since butterflies are cold-blooded insects, they love feeding in areas where they can soak up the sun's warmth. They also appreciate plants that are protected from large gusts of wind that can damage their fragile bodies. Miniature daisies dampen wind's impact by growing low to the ground, but placing them next to a wind barrier could make them even more enticing to butterflies. In the interest of protecting butterflies, you should also avoid using pesticides and herbicides on your miniature daisy ground cover. If you're seeing signs of a pest problem in your yard, opt for a non-toxic deterrent containing garlic or Bacillus thuringiensis to safeguard your pollinators.