One of my most memorable childhood memories when it comes to
gardening is enjoying and chasing butterflies that would visit my
mom’s colorful flowers.
One of my most memorable childhood memories when it comes to gardening is enjoying and chasing butterflies that would visit my mom’s colorful flowers. It’s sad, but there just aren’t as many butterflies as there used to be – what with more pollution and the abundant use of pesticides.
So, we home gardeners will just have to help a bit to encourage more butterflies.
I’m talking about enticing what few butterflies there are to out gardens by planting certain plants to attract them.
Butterflies visit certain plants to feed on nectar, the sugary solution containing the carbohydrates that butterflies need for energy.
To butterflies, the plants in a garden are more important than any design.
Even today, I enjoy spending a summer’s day lazing in the sun by my hedge of Buddleia, a cool drink in one hand and a camera in the other, watching for butterflies.
Buddleia is commonly known as “butterfly bush” because it attracts so many of them. Buddleia can either be large evergreen or deciduous shrubs, or even small trees.
The common butterfly bush (Buddleia davidii) features large felt-like tapered leaves and, most importantly, clusters of arching, spikelike fragrant flowers. The flower clusters are often lilac or purple, and are carried in profusion to make sweeping wands of color.
The shrubs or small trees are vigorous, easy-to-grow specimens. All you need is sun, good drainage and enough water to maintain growth.
In our climate, most Buddleia will keep their leaves all year long, although real cold winters may cause some to be deciduous.
Many other common landscape shrubs will also attract butterflies. Many home gardeners may already have lantana, lilac, wisteria, lavender, privet, honeysuckle, escallonia, abelia, or rosemary growing in their gardens. Bedding plants, such as sweet alyssum, petunias, statice, primula, verbena and yarrow also attract butterflies.
Another one of my favorites is lantana. These drought-tolerant shrubs can be grown as landscape shrubs, groundcovers or even in hanging baskets. They literally are covered with small flowers clusters all summer long. Common colors are lavender, pink, orange, yellow and red.
Butterfly gardeners should not use insecticides and herbicides. Many pesticides kill indiscriminately, and doom butterflies and their larvae.
My advice? Don’t fret too much about caterpillars chewing your prized plants. Natural predators usually keep caterpillar populations down anyway.
Each delicately winged butterfly that graces your garden spent a part of its life in another, less well known form: a larva. To enjoy butterflies in greatest abundance, learn to recognize their stages of growth.
All begin as an egg, which shortly becomes the larval form , a caterpillar. After feeding, caterpillars pupate in a chrysalis, then transform into beautiful butterflies.
Entice butterflies to your garden by planting some of the above specimens.
