butterfly gardens in italy

italian gardens for butterflies

an ecological italian garden of flowers and butterflies

One of the true joys of being in Italy during the spring and summer months is having the chance to witness Italy's countryside explode into colour. Wild flowers cram into every available grass verge, bursting into an array of bright and pastel colours - as if by magic!
Butterflies, hovering over this natural watercolour, flutter and glide in the sun's rays- completing this stunning natural Italian spectacle.

The Italian countryside in May and June must be one of the most impressive natural spectacles in the world, as nature here has developed a perfect harmony with man and his agricultural practices since early Etruscan times (around 400 B.C). Butterflies, honey bees and other pollinating insects maintain this whole bonanza of natural flower colour by flitting from flower to flower, pollinating unwittingly as they go. However, year after year that wonderful Italian countryside that is familiar to us all is being placed ever-increasingly at risk by the sprawling cities, tourism and modern farming methods.

Gardening, one may think, offers a place where butterflies can find exactly what they need but modern garden design in Italy places the butterflys needs very low down on the list. Sprawling English-style lawns, foreign planting schemes and pesticides create precisely the wrong conditions for butterflies and indeed everything natural in Italy. Lawns prevent natural wildflower meadows from establishing by greedily colonising any potential green space, using their powerful, genetically-modified root enzymes- killing every potential underground root competitor (wildflowers). Shrub borders are crammed with Japanese conifers, American sedge grasses and Australian native plants provide absolutely none of the leaf material required by the indigenous, native Italian butterflies!

The introduction of plants that favour butterflies, like varieties of the Buddleja (or Butterfly bush), Vitex or Viburnum help greatly and even the creation of a wild flower meadow, using wildflower seed bought in Covent garden (at a great expense) or from the Chiltern hills, UK can help. However these plants are still not really what local, Italian butterflies are looking for in their local, Italian hangouts- they are looking for LOCAL plants! The garden design system ecologica is the only ecological garden design system around today that offers the perfect environment for native Italian butterflies in Italian gardens. This is simply because ecologica uses strictly native plant species to create the wild flower meadows on which native Italian butterflies depend so much.

The ecologica system saves you money on both installation costs, water consumption AND general maintenance in a totally natural and ecological way. It uses a system that favours both Italian flora AND Italian butterfly species perfectly!