Top Ten Butterfly Garden Plants
The success or failure of your live butterfly garden is going to turn on three factors: the plants that you grow, the density in which you grow them, and your expectations.
Planting the right plants and flowers and bushes – flora that is conducive to live butterflies – is the first and most important step you can take in creating your butterfly garden. We’re going to focus on the top ten in this article, so I won’t belabor the point here.
I do want to briefly address points two and three however. It’s important to keep in mind that butterflies are drawn to color – that means that you don’t want to scatter your plants hither and yon. Instead, be sure that plant your reds near your reds and your yellows near your yellows and so forth. This will create “fields” of color that make it easier for the butterfly to notice.
This can seem counter-intuitive to lots of traditional gardeners – especially those who like a rustic or wild feel to their gardens, but a live butterfly garden is a different kind of beast.
Whether your garden is a “success” is a question of expectation, and it needs to be addressed. You can put the right butterfly garden plants in your garden and get them in the right order and still see only a handful of butterflies. If that’s what happens, have you failed?
Don’t measure your success by the number or frequency of butterflies that visit your garden. Rather, measure it by the fun you have creating the garden. Appreciate the whole range of insects that visit your garden – the praying mantis, the lady bugs, the aphids.
Pay attention to your garden. Take notes on what species do visit – then see if you can plant more of the plants they appear to prefer. Next year, you might be able to attract even more butterflies.
Live butterfly gardening is a life long habit and you can spend years learning how to do it. The truth is, you never reach the end of the experience. Every year there’s a new challenge and a new first.
If you can learn to appreciate and even celebrate the process, that will be its own success.
So without further ado, here is my – highly personalized, of course – list of the top ten butterfly garden plants.
BUTTERFLY BUSH
I think this would probably top almost everybody’s list. Butterfly bushes are easy to get in the ground, easy to maintain, and tend to reproduce almost recklessly. Buy one – buy a miniature butterfly bush if you’re pressed for space – and you’ll find yourself growing a dozen the year following.
Butterfly bushes come in a wide variety of colors. Since they’re are monochromatic – one color – they are magnets for many species of butterfly. Plant one or two at the margin of your garden and you’re almost certain to have some visitors.
ROSE BUSHES
Call me a romantic, but I love roses. Red and yellow are my favorite. Roses enjoy a reputation of being hard to grow – and I can attest that getting them replanted is tough – but once they’ve taken hold, they tend to do quite well. We’ve grown some pink roses that see daily butterfly action.
LILAC
It’s not really a garden plant, but lilac is a winner for us every year. I like to put a lawn chair about three feet away. I can sit there for thirty minutes and count a dozen or more hairstreaks and swallowtails. The problem is that they bloom pretty fast and once they’re gone, they’re gone.
Our lilac bushes are actually a bit removed from what we call our butterfly garden. I think having outposts like this is actually a good idea. We tend to look at gardens as squares of earth, but from the butterfly’s perspective there are no such boundaries. Why not make all of your property a welcome zone to butterflies? Why not turn your home into a butterfly farm?
COMMON MILKWEED
This weed grows recklessly out in the Northeast where I live, although as more and more open fields are developed, you see it less and less. It’s a staple for Monarch butterflies though – if you want some local Monarchs, then you need some milkweed. You can actually get some online and plant a small stand of it near your garden.
I don’t cultivate it personally because I’m within ready walking distance of hundreds of acres of milkweed, but if I wasn’t so situated I’d certainly plant maybe four square feet of it – and more if I had the space.
MARIGOLDS
These little flowers are easy to find and easy to transplant. Years ago we got in the habit of planting them on the perimeter of our vegetable garden near the tomato plants, but we noticed that the butterflies paid them regular visits. I think they’re nice border plants because they’re so close to the ground.
MORNING GLORY
I love the color blue and so blue – and violet – Morning Glories are a big part of our Spring yard and gardens. These tend to draw hummingbirds as well as butterflies, for which the kids and I are always grateful. I think they’re tough plants to grow – although when I mention this publicly people always disagree with me.
I like to plant them near towering bushes or flowers or poles – the mailbox, sunflowers, even the rose bushes. They grow and spawn and become entangled throughout. Their blooms are deep and rich, and you are hardly limited to the blue end of the spectrum. I’ve seen them in a broad range of colors, including pink and red and mahogany.
ASTERS
If you want to extend your gardening season and keep a little color in the garden when everything else is beginning to fade, then how about planting some New England asters? They’ll bloom in mid- August and stay as bright as crayons through October, even November if the temperature cooperates. While most of your butterflies have gone by late Fall, you can still get some hungry visitors through the end of summer.
You can get them in a wide variety of colors – I like to shoot for yellow and purple – and the stems themselves can grow up to four feet tall.
HOLLYHOCK
Speaking of tall flowers, Hollyhock have been a real boon to our butterfly gardening efforts. We plant these because we love them. They’re a part of the Mallow family and the ones that we prefer grow seven or eight feet tall and are topped with a bevy of eye-stunning blossoms. The plants are rich in nectar.
We like to plant a few stands, focusing on the pink and deep reds. These go nicely alongside rose bushes with similar colors. Be sure to plant them at the farthest – in our case the eastern – wall of your garden so that they don’t hide it all from your view.
DANDELION
Talk about plants with a bad reputation! Dandelions have an unbelievably rich yellow color and are very popular with many species of butterfly. They grow like – well, like weeds – and if you aren’t careful you can quickly become overwhelmed.
One way to cultivate them is to set aside a small portion of your yard as “wild” – maybe twenty square feet. Let the dandelions grow with abandon there – and see what else sprouts up naturally as well.
And don’t forget that while Dandelions attract butterflies, they can also be good plants for you. We eat steamed dandelion greens. I haven’t made wine yet, but I want to!
SNAPDRAGONS
Until I had children, I never quite appreciated these flowers. But they’re loads of fun in the garden and they’re quite hospitable to butterflies. The large blossoms can be pinched off individually and the “dragon mouth” made to open and close. Pick one and chase your three-year-old around!
Like hollyhock, you get a broad variety of colors from which to choose. Use snapdragons to supplement existing colors or fill some gaps in the spectrum. They grow quite thick and dense and can be safe and cozy places for butterflies to nestle in and hide during rain and shadowy hours.
That’s far from a definitive list. But it’s a good start – and it’s certainly where I’d start if I was just getting going. See what works for you. Talk to local gardeners about what grows well in your region. If you can find a local butterfly gardener – check with your local Audubon chapter – they might be able to give you some practical advice.
Gardening is a blend of art and science – the more information you have, the better. But there’s no substitute for experience and practice. As I said earlier, if you’ve decided to give it a whirl, then be sure that you are gauging your success by how much you enjoy the process!
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