Check out our full selection of plants that Attract Pollinators!
Butterflies are living art in the garden. These winged beauties add color and motion, not to mention playing an invaluable role as pollinators. Unfortunately, I’m seeing fewer butterflies, especially monarchs, in my gardens. It’s eerie. Let’s each make a commitment to take at least one step to creating more butterfly-friendly landscapes.
In addition to incorporating some of the plants listed in this blog, the following tips will also make your gardens a highly favored ‘landing strip’ for butterflies:
- Choose a sunny spot sheltered from wind for your garden. If your property is an open area, create a wind barrier with small trees or a fence. A location near a wild meadow is even better, providing a greater diversity of plant material.
- Site the garden near trees and shrubs that provide shelter at night as well as in bad weather.
- Don’t use pesticides!
- Don’t put bird feeders or birdbaths near the garden!
- Provide early, mid and late blooming nectar sources.
- Accept the fact that there will be some foliage damage from the butterfly’s caterpillar stage. If you can’t stand looking at some leaf chomping, switch your focus to the butterfly that just fluttered by your head. Some perennials relished by the caterpillars are Hibiscus, Milkweed (Asclepias) and Parsley.
- Create ‘water puddles’. Butterflies can’t drink from open water. They ‘sip’ from surface moisture on the ground or stones. All you need is a shallow spot where water puddles or make a ‘fountain’ by sinking a pail or bucket filled with wet sand in the ground.
Some plants that butterflies love to visit:
Pink Delight Butterfly Bush A very popular garden specimen with showy pink flowers in late summer when little else blooms, and attracts butterflies; may treat as a perennial and cut it back to the ground each spring as it regrows vigorously and blooms on new wood.
Purple Dome Aster A mounded selection that is stunning during the late summer months and into the fall; lovely purple flowers with yellow centers bloom among dark green foliage; beautiful in borders or fresh cut arrangements. Late bloomers provide welcome food before migration.
Catmint Purrsian Blue (Nepeta) Lovely periwinkle-blue flowers bloom just above the nicely mounded aromatic foliage from early summer until fall; excellent for containers, beds and borders. Shear back Catmints in mid-summer for a neater appearance and second round of flowers. Zone 3
Sedum Autumn Joy 3” A highly desirable and popular groundcover, forming a dense mound completely covered in broccoli-like salmon-pink flowers which fade to red in early fall, succulent dusty-green foliage is prominent the rest of the season; needs a dry and sunny location.
Pinch back taller cultivars in early July for shorter, stiffer stemmed, blooming plants in fall. Zone 3
Yarrow Coronation Gold (Achillea) A lovely, fast growing perennial with an upright-mounded habit; featuring ferny green leaves and golden yellow colored blooms during the summer months; a perfect addition to garden beds, borders and fresh cut arrangements
Yarrows are sensational, summer blooming, heat busters. ‘Coronation Gold’ is taller at 40” with greener foliage. Yarrow is one of those plants that truly needs full sun not to flop. Zone 3