May 29 2010
Butterfly Garden Basics
Flowers are basic to the butterfly garden.
There are 2 basic things that most butterflies are searching for when they visit your butterfly garden. They are searching for food, usually in the form of nectar from the butterfly flowers, and they are also looking for a place to lay their eggs.
Butterflies are not very particular about the flowers they get nectar from, as long as they can reach the nectar with their proboscis (the coiled up, straw-like appendage on their head). However, nearly every butterfly has a specific host plant that they use, such as the Monarch butterfly that will only lay her eggs on plants in the milkweed family.
It is a good idea to plant several butterfly flowers of the same type together in large groups to make it easier for the butterflies to find them. They are near sighted and may miss a single butterfly flower. They also like flat topped flowers such as Queen Anne’s Lace, and flowers with short nectar tubes, like the Cone Flower, Black-eyed Susans, Zinnias, etc. Butterflies seem to be most attracted by red, orange, yellow, pink, and purple colored flowers.
The host plants for most butterflies are the native plants and trees found naturally in the area they inhabit, however you can still attract certain butterflies to stay in your yard longer by planting these native perennials and trees in and around your butterfly garden. I have Butterfly Weed (a member of the milkweed family) as a host plant for Monarchs, the herb Parsley for Black Swallowtails, and Asters to attract the Pearl Crescent butterfly. If you have a favorite butterfly that you want to attract to your butterfly garden, be sure to put some of its host plant in or near your garden .
Butterflies enjoy sunny, sheltered locations with some flat rocks for them to perch on and soak up the sun. They also enjoy a drink from the mud puddles left after a summer rain. If you provide these simple basics in your butterfly garden, you will have many of the winged visitors dropping by.
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