Butterfly Plants
Gardening for birds and butterflies is fun and easy. Choose a wide selection of flowers to add variety to your wildlife watching, and avoid using pesticides in those areas.
Butterflies and hummingbirds are nectar fanatics, and butterflies are sun worshippers. They depend on solar energy to warm their bodies. So set out your butterfly buffet in a sunny bed. Good annual flowers include zinnias and marigolds, easy to grow from seed, and lantanas. Such native perennials as purple coneflowers, black-eyed Susans, phlox, verbenas and bee balm are premium butterfly flowers and no-fuss. Butterfly bush is a long-blooming, drought-tolerant perennial shrub. Find spots for Milkweed and Joe-pye and then roll out the butterfly welcome mat.
The foliage of some plants is food for butterfly larvae (caterpillars). By adding these “host” plants, you can enjoy the entire life cycle. The monarch butterfly caterpillar feeds exclusively on the leaves of milkweed, gorging until it is mature enough to pupate as a beautiful, jade-green chrysalis. Milkweeds such as butterflyweed and swamp milkweed are available in nurseries.