How To Plant a Butterfly Garden

The Butterfly Paradise Pre-Planned Cottage Garden's beautiful blooms will attract pollinators to your yard.The Butterfly Paradise Pre-Planned Cottage Garden's beautiful blooms will attract pollinators to your yard.
The Butterfly Paradise Pre-Planned Cottage Garden's beautiful blooms will attract pollinators to your yard.

By David Salman, Founder and Chief Horticulturalist for High Country Gardens

A butterfly garden can be a wonderful part of your landscape, and will make a meaningful difference by creating habitat for butterflies in all of their life stages. Anyone who loves growing plants and flowers can grow a butterfly garden. A garden that's good for butterflies is also good for other pollinators, such as bees and hummingbirds, who often share the same nectar plants and utilize the same habitat.

The Four Basic Elements of a Butterfly Garden

flowers and foodflowers and food

Flowers and food: Plant a mix of flowers that bloom from the start of spring through fall. Make sure to include food plants for caterpillars, such as Milkweed for monarch butterfly larvae.

sheltershelter

Shelter: Leave some bare patches of ground or small brush piles (in unused corners of the yard). Leave herbaceous plants, such as grasses, standing over the winter to protect overwintering eggs and caterpillar pupae waiting to emerge.

waterwater

Water: A mud puddle is ideal for butterflies, providing them with a source of water and salt/minerals. You can create one using a bird bath or submerged pie plate, and add sand, gravel and water. 

pesticidespesticides

A Safe, Pesticide-Free Environment: Don't use chemical insecticides (especially systemic ones). Use caution when applying organic pesticides and use herbicides only for a weed emergency.

Tips for Attracting Butterflies to Your Yard

To attract and feed adult butterflies, our 'Butterfly Paradise' Pre-Planned Cottage Garden and our Pollinator Paradise Pre-Planned Garden provide  many months of nectar-rich flowers for a wide range of butterflies. The pre-planned gardens arrive with our premium plants, care instructions and garden maps, to make planting a butterfly garden simple.

A Little Butterfly Biology

Butterflies and moths have three stages in their life cycles before becoming the flying adult insects we recognize.

  1. The mother butterfly lays eggs on preferred food plants.
  2. The eggs hatch into caterpillars who feed on their food plants. These caterpillars grow to their full size before going dormant as a chrysalis (butterfly) or a cocoons (moth) in preparation for adulthood.
  3. Then caterpillars go through metamorphosis and emerge as flying adults. Adults mate, lay eggs, feed and die, leaving behind the next generation.
asclepias caterpillarasclepias caterpillar
Food plants for caterpillars var, but widely fed-upon plants include oak, willow, cherry, poplar, birch, apple, trees.

Plant Both Caterpillar and Butterfly Food

Often the flowering plants that feed the adult moths and butterflies are different from the plants that feed caterpillars. For a butterfly garden, the gardener must plant both.

Most flowers that attract butterflies and moths will feed a wide range of species.

When it comes to feeding their caterpillars, butterflies and moths can either have a need for very specific food plants or have a taste for a wider range of plants. This depends on the species of each moth and butterfly as they will have different requirements.

Adult Butterflies

Flower shapes that attract butterflies:

Caterpillars

Food plants for caterpillars vary, but widely fed-upon plants include:

  • oak, willow, cherry, poplar, birch, apple, and alder trees 
  • dandelions 
  • clover
  • dill

Monarch Butterflies & Caterpillars

For widespread migrating species of butterflies, like the regal Monarch:


Shop Butterfly Favorite Plants

  1. Common Milkweed, Asclepias Syriaca, with pollinators

    Asclepias syriaca ‚Common Milkweed‚ is a gorgeous plant that produces purple/pink flower clusters that wildflower gardeners love and spreads quickly. This native perennia...

    Learn More
    Common Milkweed Common Milkweed Asclepias syriaca
    As low as $13.99 Sale $12.59
    Per Plant - 5" Deep Pot
    Asclepias syriaca 'Common Milkweed' is a gorgeous plant that produces purple/pink flower clusters that wildflower gardeners love and spreads quickly. This native perennial is a primary food source for the Monarch butterfly providing large leaves for caterpillars and big pink globe-like flowers that provide nectar for the adult butterflies. Planting it will help to support Monarch populations. Perennial.
  2. Rose Swamp Milkweed

    Asclepias incarnata ‚Rose‚ (Swamp Milkweed) is a showy pink blooming Asclepias species that is a food plant for Monarch butterfly caterpillars and a nectar source for ad...

    Learn More
    Rose Swamp Milkweed Rose Swamp Milkweed Asclepias incarnata
    As low as $13.99 Sale $12.59
    Per Plant - 5" Deep Pot
    Asclepias incarnata 'Rose' (Swamp Milkweed) is a showy pink blooming Asclepias species that is a food plant for Monarch butterfly caterpillars and a nectar source for adult butterflies. Also known as Swamp Milkweed, it grows best in moist or wet soils.
  3. Sedum Autumn Fire, Dark Pink Sedum, Autumn Fire Stonecrop

    Sedum telephium ‚Autumn Fire‚ (Stonecrop) is an improved form of Sedum ‚Autumn Joy‚ that is larger growing, has larger flower heads and is longer blooming. Th...

    Learn More
    Autumn Fire Sedum Autumn Fire Sedum Sedum 'Autumn Fire'
    As low as $11.99 Sale $10.79
    Per Plant - 5" Deep Pot
    Sedum telephium 'Autumn Fire' (Stonecrop) is an improved form of Sedum 'Autumn Joy' that is larger growing, has larger flower heads and is longer blooming. The flat heads of rose-pink flowers appear in late summer. Leave the faded flowers on the plant for added winter interest.
  4. Verbena peruviana

    Verbena peruviana ‚Red Devil‚ (Perennial Verbena) is a perennial variety that grows as a groundcover and blooms all summer with a dazzling display of brilliant red flower...

    Learn More
    Red Devil Perennial Verbena Red Devil Perennial Verbena Verbena peruviana
    As low as $11.99
    Per Plant - 5" Deep Pot
    Verbena peruviana 'Red Devil' (Perennial Verbena) is a perennial variety that grows as a groundcover and blooms all summer with a dazzling display of brilliant red flowers. 3" tall x 15-18" wide.

Creating A Safe, Pesticide-Free Environment

It is important to not spray indiscriminately in your yard and kill caterpillars. Even organic formulations like BT (Bacillus thuringiensis) that you would spray to kill corn earworms (moth caterpillars), are broad spectrum and will kill all moth and butterfly caterpillars.

It's also essential NOT to use systemic chemical insecticides (absorbed through leaf tissue and distributed through all parts of the plants including flowers). Many of these formulations are Neonicotinoids. Systemically treated plants have toxic flowers which will poison the adult butterflies and moths!

And if you have tomatoes, you'll have "horn worms", the caterpillar of hawk moths. These are the hovering hummingbird-like moths that pollinate flowers at dusk like Evening Primrose (Oenothera) and Hummingbird Mint (Agastache). So plant an extra tomato plant or two and pick off the horn worms, don't spray, leaving some to mature into adults.

Listen to an interview with David Salman on Utah Public Radio to Learn More About Butterfly Gardening

The Xerces Society

The Xerces Society is a nonprofit organization that protects wildlife through the conservation of invertebrates (insects) and their habitat. For over forty years, the Society has been at the forefront of invertebrate protection worldwide, harnessing the knowledge of scientists and the enthusiasm of citizens to implement conservation programs.

The society has just published an excellent new book:
"Attracting Native Pollinators: Protecting North America’s Bees and Butterflies" which is available on their website: http://www.xerces.org.

It will give you a lot more specific information on what to plant regionally to support native butterfly populations in your garden and landscape.

 

 

Text by David Salman

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