Tips to Attract Butterflies to Your Garden

Invite the majestic presence of swallowtails, skippers, monarchs, and more into your garden with these butterfly-attracting tips. Using plants with ample nectar-rich blooms as well as providing necessary shelter will bring in many species of winged visitors. Not to mention beautify your garden over a long, fruitful season.

Butterflies like a lot of sunlight, so locate your garden in a sunny area.

If you live in a windy location, plant your butterfly-attracting plants near a building, fence, or hedge to protect them.

Plant a variety of nectar-rich plants, as well as shrubs and evergreens for shelter.

Butterflies and native flowering plants have co-evolved: put in plants that are native to your area. The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center provides lists of plants native to states and regions.

Certain colors are attractive to butterflies like red, yellow, pink, purple, or orange.

Avoid using pesticides, especially around nectar-producing plants.

Provide a shallow source of water – try a birdbath with pebbles lining the bowl.

Place a rock in a sunny spot for butterfly basking and resting.

Create a “puddling area” by digging a shallow hole filled with compost or manure. This is where rainwater will collect and release essential salts and minerals.

If you want butterflies to breed in your garden, put in some caterpillar food plants, such as parsley, milkweeds, asters, thistles, violets, clover, grasses, and Queen Anne’s Lace.

Since butterflies need nectar throughout the entire adult phase of their lives, try to create a design that will allow for a continuous bloom – when one stops blooming, another starts.