Butterflies and How to Attract Them

Creating Butterfly Gardens

Choose the Site

An adult butterfly’s activities are all oriented around the sun. They use the sun to navigate and to increase their body temperature which is necessary for strong flight. They use nectar from plants that grow in full sun. So it’s important that you locate the butterfly garden in sunny areas of the landscape.

In addition, because butterflies use up more energy flying in windy areas, they prefer feeding in areas where they do not have to fight the wind. So choose a sunny site out of the wind. In a windy area, create a hot spot for butterflies by planting on the south or southwest side of a building, fence, or hedge.

Considering your own enjoyment, determine where a concentration of butterfly plants would be most visible, enjoyable, and easy to maintain. Good locations include:

• Along a walkway or next to a patio or other seating area
• Near a frequently-used entry
• Near a neighbor’s flower garden
• In a vegetable garden
• Close to a frequently used-window

Include Plants for Adult Butterflies
Flying requires great amounts of energy. Therefore, butterflies must locate high-energy food sources such as nectar-producing flowers. Nectar contains energy-rich sugars and has about the same basic chemical make-up, no matter what flower it comes from. Hence, a hungry adult butterfly may visit several different flowers for nectar. Likewise, a single nectar-producing flower may be visited by several different butterfly species. A wide variety of flowers, including many popular garden and landscape plants (Table 1), can provide nectar for butterflies. However, butterflies do have preferences.

Brightly-colored, fragrant plants are especially attractive. Plants with flower heads that contain small multiple florets, such as those found on asters, furnish butterflies with landing pads. Here butterflies can rest and sip nectar, as well as pollinate the plants.

Note that some ornamental flowering plants have been hybridized to produce particularly showy flowers. Unfortunately, these highly-developed plants may not be good sources of nectar. When selecting plants for nectar, avoid flowers described as “double” and instead choose the singular forms.

When you select plants for a butterfly garden, strive to have known butterfly plants in bloom from spring to late fall. To extend the blooming season, include annual flowers and remove dead flower-heads to extend blooming periods.

Good plants for containers include fuchsias, sweet alyssum, garden sage, dianthus, and lavender. For containers, avoid tall annuals such as tall marigolds, tall zinnias, and cosmos. To keep a butterfly garden from looking bleak during winter, include some plants with interesting winter structure or evergreen foliage–lavender and hyssop, for example.