“My Backyard Butterfly Hobby”

— A LITTLE INFO ABOUT HOW I BUILT A BACKYARD SANCTUARY FOR RAISING WILD BUTTERFLIES

How to build a super easy backyard butterfly habitat house in a day for under $375!

Building an easy and simple DIY backyard butterfly enclosure has been one of our best decisions as a family. I couldn’t find any “human-sized” enclosures that would allow me and the kids to watch and care for caterpillars as they made their journey into butterflies. After a good amount of research, I created my own! It has turned out to be so much better than I could have imagined. Reasons we love it:

  • The kids are excited to check on the caterpillars & butterflies every day. Plus, they are learning all kinds of things through their natural curiosity!

  • The adults are finding that even a little pop out to the backyard to check on the state of things provides an unexpected bit of serenity in our hectics day.

  • It’s just cool.

  • It’s good for the environment to help the butterfly populations resurge.

  • It’s fairly low-maintenance.

Here’s what you need:

The above two items are all you need for your Butterfly House. Then you will want to outfit your butterfly enclosure with some plants, ideally from a local nursery (for your own sanity! When you start getting caterpillars and need to run out for new plants for them to much on, it’s easiest to have somewhere nearby.)

  • Food Plants: Milkweed (for monarchs) | Passiflora (for Zebra Longwings) | Other feeder plants (for other butterfly species)

  • Pollinator Plants: We have been using Lantana & Pentas

  • Host Plant for them to make their Chrysalis on (this is optional, but we’ve found great success with ours)

  • Caterpillars: Either get some on plants at your local nursery, try ordering them online, or just wait for butterflies to come find your plants.

  • That’s it!

Pop-Up Tent - $200 +/-

Mesh Walls with Windows - $113

Plants - These cost approx $10-15 per Milkweed plant at my local nursery. The corky Passiflora vine near me is $20-35 per plant (though the Zebra Longwings seem to eat less than the Monarchs, so I only have two Passiflora and a lot of Zebra Longwing caterpillars/butterflies.)

DIRECTIONS:

  1. Set up your 10x10 pop-up tent

    • Depending on where you live, you may want to add weights or stakes to the tent legs to avoid the tent blowing over in bad weather

  2. Add the four mesh walls (they simply velcro on)

  3. Open the windows so that butterflies can make their way in and out

  4. Add plants to the interior of the tent

    • I put some of ours on a little table and some near the windows

    • I also like to put a plant or two on the outside of the tent up against an open window to attract local butterflies

  5. Ideally, you will have some caterpillars that arrive on your plants from the nursery (give it a few days to see if you notice any)

  6. Add some chairs, sit back with a coffee, and hang out in your new butterfly sanctuary!

WHAT TO BUY

Below are the exact Mesh Canopy Walls With Windows & type of 10x10 Pop-Up Tent I used.

I searched through a lot of mesh walls, and there were very few good options. This one has worked perfectly for us, so I am very happy with it.

We already owned a 10x10 tent, so the one below was the optionI found that was a fair price point with good reviews. Any 10x10 pop-up tent should work though.

Impact Canopy Walls for 10' x 10' Canopy Tent, Food Service Mesh Sidewall Kit with Service Windows, 4 Walls Only, Black Mesh - $112.71 (check price)

Eurmax 10'x10' Ez Pop Up Canopy Tent Commercial Instant Canopies with Heavy Duty Roller Bag,Bonus 4 Canopy Sand Bags (White) - $189.99 (check price)