How to Plant a Butterfly Garden

When I first designed my gardens, I researched butterfly and hummingbird attracting plants to entice them to my yard. I dreamed of having a garden that was flooded by these beautiful creatures. Thankfully, there is a lot of plant overlap that attracts both.

Once I honed my plant list, I considered deer browsing and what plants I should avoid. While I don’t mind adding plants that have a low deer resistance rating because I spray them, I prefer to focus more on plants that they tend to avoid. To learn more about creating a deer-resistant garden, check out my blog post, Deer-Proofing Your Garden.

Attracting Butterflies

If you want to start a butterfly garden, it is important to plan ahead. Do your research, site and prepare the bed, and include plants that both caterpillars and butterflies enjoy. To achieve success, be sure to feed butterflies with adult nectar plants and developing caterpillars with host plants.

Location

It is important to plant nectar plants near fences, shrubs, trees and vines to provide shelter from winds and rain. When designing a butterfly border, there are few things to keep in mind:

• Plant in a sunny location.
• Research and select plants that will attract butterflies common to your area.
• Create a succession of blooms so butterflies visit and want to hang around.

Host Plants

Since butterflies lay eggs on certain plants that feed their caterpillars, butterflies prefer visiting gardens where host plants are nearby.

Examples of host plants include Milkweed, Viburnum, Wisteria, Flowering Dogwoods, Snapdagons, Foxgloves and many others. For more information about host plants, see Creating Inviting Habitats by the Virginia Cooperative Extension.

Tip: leave plants that are dying back or defoliated in the borders because they may contain eggs or developing butterflies on them. I allow my plants to die back naturally and avoid cutting plants back until early spring where possible. It doesn’t always look great, but it helps keep the butterfly lifecycle going!

Nectar Plants

It is important to select plants with varying bloom times so butterflies are fed from spring through fall. Butterflies’ attention is drawn to clusters of like colors so it is important to plant enough of the same flowers together.

Tips:

• Butterflies favor native plants.
• Where possible, avoid pesticides in your gardens because they can wipe out butterflies and other pollinators.
• Butterflies are drawn to brightly colored purples, blues, yellows, whites and pinks.
• Focus on plants with multiple florets as well as composite flowers, because they can get more nectar at one time.
• Avoid double flowering varieties because they carry less nectar.

Plants that Attract Butterflies

In my Zone 6a gardens, butterflies love to sample Bee Balm, Echinacea, Butterfly Bush, Butterfly Weed, Liatris (when I had it), Coreopsis, Black-Eyed Susan, Tall Phlox, Sedum Autumn Joy and Joe Pye Weed. There are lots of others, so check with your local extension for butterfly loving flowers.

How to Plant Butterfly Attracting Flowers

• Buy butterfly loving flowers.
• Lay out where you want them planted.
• Dig a hole 2x the size of the root ball of the plant.

• Remove plants from nursery containers.
• Loosen the root ball with your fingers so to encourage the roots to grow outside the root ball.

• Set plants in the ground.
• Backfill hole with fresh and existing garden soil.
• Cover with mulch.

For more gardening tips and tricks, click here.