Sally Roth's book, Attracting Butterflies & Hummingbirds to Your Backyard, provides comprehensive, concise, and intriguing information.

Summary

Sally Roth covers not only nectar, water, and other butterfly edibles, but also plants -- host plants, nectar plants, and garden design.

She also offers a look not only into the behavior of hummingbirds and butterflies, but a very useful gallery of the common butterflies and hummingbirds in the United States.

Sprinkled through the pages are gorgeous pictures, useful sidebars of top 10 plants and tidbits, and instructions for small projects.

Small Spaces

Most of the book's small projects will work well in small outdoor spaces like porches, patios, decks, and balconies.

In fact, most of the book is applicable to small spaces, with the exception of the garden design section. Even the design section, however, can give ideas on how to arrange containers of flowering plants.

Nectar

Sally Roth includes details on the color and shape of flowers that attract hummingbirds, butterflies, or both, with some ideas on how to get started simply. She also offers a short section on gardening basics and a longer section on nectar feeders.

The easiest way to begin is with containers of plants -- a hanging basket you pick up on the spur of the moment or an arrangement of annuals in a big pot for the front step... You want plants that bloom for weeks or months in a container, so annual flowers are the way to go. (Most hardy perennials bloom for only 2 weeks.)

Water

Western Tiger Swallowtail (GNU Free Documentation license)

You can also get much out of her comprehensive section on providing water for hummingbirds and butterflies. Ms. Roth covers spritzes, sprays, misters, and even pond waterfalls for hummingbirds.

Even more interesting are the ways she suggests to provide moisture for butterflies -- this information just isn't widely available. One idea I'd like to try is burying a receptacle at ground level with a moist sand-soil mix. Her instructions are very clear.

The most successful was another simple solution -- a clay plant saucer filled with river stones and gravel. I soaked the stones, allowing a bit of water to collect in the bottom of the saucer but making sure the tops of the stones were exposed for perches for the butterflies.

Fruit and Other Treats

If you want details on how to provide fruit for butterflies, either through plants or feeders, this book has solid information. This section includes instructions on how to make a fruit feeder that insects other than butterflies cannot access.

Even more unusual are the instructions to build a platform-type feeder that attracts carrion-eating butterflies, yet keeps out raccoons and other marauders.

Shelter

The section on shelter focuses on plants, complete with two plant tables of decent length. Ms. Roth recommends choosing plants that do double or triple duty, as food, shelter, and foliage for caterpillars.

The Next Generation

While Sally Roth points out that hummingbirds are harder to convince to make your outdoor space their home, caterpillars are relatively easier. She describes the butterfly life cycle in simple terms, the dangers to and defenses of caterpillars, and gardens designed for caterpillars.

To encourage hummingbirds to nest, the book lists several species of tree and shrub, most too large for those of us with small outdoor spaces. However, we can still offer hummingbird nesting material, as the book describes.

Garden Ideas

At the beginning of the chapter you'll find some easy designs using only annual flowers. These are gardens you can start from seed or bedding plants, and the only care required is some weeding and watering until the plants are established.

Behavior

The section on butterfly and hummingbird behavior is detailed enough that you're bound to learn something new, yet concise enough that you won't bog down in the reading.

Try watching a red admiral flutter across the yard and you'll see it's a lot harder to track than a yellow tiger swallowtail. That's because its undersides are painted...

...hummingbirds adopt an unusual posture for sleeping or torpor. When they need to preserve energy they point their bill upward at a 45-degree angle, close their eyes, and stay put.

Galleries

The hummingbird and butterfly galleries included in the book have well-balanced entries that are not too short, not too long, and not full of fluff. Ranges are described in general terms ("...from the Great Lakes east to New England and south to Florida and the Gulf..."), the drawings include wingspan or length measurements, and a small selection of favored plants is listed. Hummingbird entries include habitat, nesting, and aerial displays, while butterfly entries include caterpillar descriptions and host plants.