How to create a garden paradise for butterflies

I have long wanted to create a part of the garden that would be attractive to butterflies, being impressed by a friend's bed which works very well and given the right weather and season, is alive with these beautiful insects which so enhance the enjoyment of a garden.

The difficulty in our garden space is threefold: there is limited sun that comes into the garden as we live in a hollow that slopes down to the stream, and so the exposure to sunlight is restricted; secondly, we are surrounded by fairly mature oak trees that dominate the soil and we have found many plants and trees that we have planted simply will not flourish, but remain stilted in their growth and do not develop as hoped. 

Finally, the flattened area that was dug out when the Mill was rebuilt in the 1980s was covered by a thick layer of local stone to make a driveway, and in any case had never been historically cultivated when the building was simply a working watermill and not a dwelling. 

No doubt the miller and his family lived in the nearby hamlet where vegetable gardening would have been much easier with better exposure to the south, and integration into the village would have been easier and safer. 

We have had the soil analysed, and the list of plants that would tolerate the conditions was pretty restricted. So, choosing the little corner of the garden where the hours of sunlight were maximized, I decided to build a deep raised bed where the quality of the soil could be enhanced by bringing in suitable soil from elsewhere. It is also well placed so that the water tank I installed a couple of years ago can be filled with the water from the stream for the summer months. The shape is a truncated triangle to fit the space, and as large as I could make it.

I first built a treated wooden frame to contain the bed. If I had lots of space, this would have been much cheaper with stone walls, but inevitably they would have taken up too much limited area. I also have a friend who has been using raised beds for many years in her flourishing vegetable garden, and so taking advice I first lined it with flattened cardboard from local shops and then added a layer of branches; all this to provide good drainage, and stop too much root growth coming from below.

I knew in advance that it would require a massive amount of soil, but we are lucky that just a couple of kilometres away there is a dump where the nearby town puts all of its green waste, leaves and branches from the parks and gardens. 

It has been processed with a variety of shredders and wood-chippers over the years and has decomposed into a reasonable compost, and gardeners are allowed to take it away for their gardens. You have to choose the best, and be prepared to sieve out bigger branches and any plastic waste that has inevitably found its way into this green dump.

With the help of a friend, after about 10 journeys with the trailer – leaving the compost in buckets to make carrying them easy – and adding garden centre horse manure fertiliser as we went along, the bed was soon filled to at least 70cm depth. 

After leaving it for a couple of months to allow it to settle, I then asked my friend with his mature butterfly beds what plants are suitable, and he kindly gave me not only a list but also cuttings from his own bed.

The cuttings I have are from asters, Nicotiana, Field and Devil's-bit Scabius, and Verbena Bonariensis. To these I will add a buddleia, and a lavender bush when I find suitable specimens from a local garden centre. No doubt this list is far from exhaustive, but I will make a start with these plants and bushes. 

I am writing this article in the winter before the plants have had time to grow and hopefully attract butterflies! There are some months to go, but I have taken the liberty of using some photos from my friend's butterfly garden feeding on some of the plants in his butterfly bed from previous years. Hopefully my own will be as successful!