Landscaping For ‘Flying Flowers’

by Pat Diaz, from the July 2004 Newsletter

Butterfly watching is a fun activity that is rapidly growing in popularity, and no wonder—it truly is a joy to see these ‘flying flowers’ in your garden. There are a number of things that you can do to set the stage for attracting butterflies to your garden.

Butterflies need nectar as well as host plants for their eggs and caterpillars. One of the great benefits to providing these necessities is that you not only have a fragrant and beautiful garden, you have the opportunity to watch the fascinating life cycle of butterflies: egg, larva, pupa and adult. The female lays her eggs on particular plants that the larvae, or caterpillars, will eat when they hatch. You can attract certain kinds of butterflies if you know which host plants they prefer.

Families of butterflies include whites and sulphurs; coppers, blues, and hairstreaks; swallowtails; true brushfoots; longwings; admirals; satyrs; milkweed butterflies; and fritillaries. An excellent book on butterfly gardening is The Butterfly Gardener’s Guide, edited by Claire Hagen Dole.

It is important to start with a sunny location for your butterfly garden, one that gets at least six hours of full sun a day. If you plant a variety of nectar flowers that bloom at different times throughout the growing season, you will attract a constant array of these beautiful creatures. They also like to see a wide patch of flowers the same color, knowing that they can gather lots of nectar without expending energy flying from patch to patch. Apparently concentration of color is more important than having specific kinds of plants. The colors they like best are purple, white, pink, orange, and yellow.

Avoid using pesticides and insecticides in your garden and limit weeding and cutting back of plants as you might deprive caterpillars of food or wipe out newly laid masses of eggs. Keep an area of your garden moist or wet as butterflies will flock to that moisture. Butterflies acquire mineral compounds they cannot get from plants by gathering on moist or wet ground, an activity called ‘puddling.’ They also like basking stones, especially black ones, to rest on and absorb the sun’s heat.

For our climate there are a number of suitable perennials that make good host plants. These include asters, columbine, daisies, coneflowers, honeysuckle, lupines, sedum, violets, bleeding hearts, dicentra, false indigo, hollyhocks, flax, dill, milkweed, pussy willow, sulfur buckwheat, and stonecrop. Good annual choices include marigolds, parsley, nasturtiums, rue, sunflowers, and rudbeckia. Perennial nectar plant choices include purple coneflowers, butterfly weed and butterfly bush, yarrow, lantana, and autumn joy sedum. Annuals for nectar include calendula, cosmos, heliotrope, impatiens, sweet William, zinnias, alliums, Asiatic lilies, and King Alfred daffodils.

Autumn-blooming gardens are a very important source of nectar and give butterflies a boost before they either over-winter or move on to their winter homes. Late bloomers that provide this important boost include sedums, pink and purple asters, salvia, lantana, penta, and dark night bluebeard.

You can also have a wonderful butterfly garden on a deck or patio. Butterflies are small and like cozy feeding areas, so get some containers and start planting their favorite plants! The only thing that would be different would be making sure containerized plants have sufficient water, as they tend to dry out faster than those in the ground. And there’s nothing better than sitting on your deck or patio and having one of these beautiful, gentle creatures land right on your arm or foot where you can see their beauty up close.

Here are a few Web sites that you can consult for further help: www.butterflies.com, the North American Butterfly Assn., and the Xerces Society.

Copyright: Copyright on articles, recipes and images are jointly held by the Moscow Food Co-op and the respective contributors, except were otherwise noted.

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