Gardening for Butterflies Program Recap

Thank you to Louise Senior from the Rutgers Master Gardeners of Mercer County for a wonderful overview of gardening for butterflies.  There are so many ways to garden and a growing trend is to cultivate gardens for butterflies and other pollinators.  Butterfly gardens can be very beautiful, but also require special attention to ensure those gardens can sustain butterfly populations from year to year.  So let’s jump in and see how we can make our gardens more attractive for butterflies!

Butterflies?

Yes, people actually garden for the purpose of attracting butterflies.  While many people enjoy the aesthetic appeal of seeing butterflies, butterflies are actually a very good indicator of the health of your garden.  Additionally, butterflies are an important part of the food chain, serving as meals for birds, bats, and other insectivores, like pupal wasps.

Butterflies are part of the Lepidoptera order of inspects due to the scales on their wings.  The butterfly lifecycle occurs in several stages that will help inform us of what plants we need in order to attract and keep butterflies.  Butterflies lay eggs on host plants that, when hatched, turn into caterpillars.  These caterpillars will feed on host plants while they grow.  At a certain point, the caterpillar will find a branch or sturdy plant stem and create a chrysalis (cocoon), where the caterpillar essentially liquifies itself.  After about 10-14 days, the adult butterfly emerges from the chrysalis.   The adult butterfly will eventually mate and lay more eggs, but will feed solely on nectar, making the types of plants in your garden more restrictive.

How Should I Garden?

Butterflies NEED sunlight in order to function so be sure your garden is able to get at least 6 hours of direct sunlight each day.  If the sun/shade in your yard changes throughout the day, you can plant multiple smaller patches or use moveable containers to create an environment more conducive to butterflies.  Be sure to consider including butterfly-friendly plants for all 3 bloom seasons to ensure the butterflies stay year-round, not to mention having host plants around so that the butterflies can lay their eggs and caterpillars can feed on them once they hatch.

Flower shape matters for butterflies; the flatter the flower, the easier it is for them to land and access the nectar.  Many people think that butterflies act like pollinators, but in truth, they have a minimal effect when it comes to pollination.  Look for plants in the composite family; more on this later!

Some other considerations when gardening for butterflies are to delay fall cleanup to allow certain species of butterflies to lay eggs and overwinter.  Also, try to avoid treating your gardens with generic pesticides, and this can kills the butterflies or poison them, which can have effects farther up the food chain.  You can also consider creating little “puddle places” for butterflies buy mixing some soil or rocks with water.  Butterflies engage in a practice called “puddling” where the male will “drink” water from puddle because of the minerals from the soil and then transfer it to the female during mating; it is thought the minerals are used to help maintain healthy eggs.

What Should I Plant?

If you want to get the full effect of butterflies in your garden, it is best to have both host plants for the caterpillars and flowering nectar plants for the adults.  Some good host plants include:

• Milkweeds
• Carrot family plants (dill, fennel, parsley, parsnip)
• Tulip popular trees
• Coneflowers
• Hollyhocks

For adults, you can try:

• Asters
• Ageratum (floss flower)
• Brazilian Verbena
• Chrysanthemums
• Coneflowers – stick to true natives or plants with the native’s flower structure
• Goldenrod
• Lavender
• Lilac – early season nectar source
• Mexican Sunflowers
• Pentas (Egyptian Sunflower)
• Tall Garden Phlox
• Sweet William
• Zinnias – Lilliput variety attract 3x the number of butterflies

More Information

If you are looking for more information to help purpose your garden for butterflies, you can visit the Rutgers Master Gardeners of Mercer County’s page at https://mgofmc.org/butterfly-gardening-basics/ or the National Wildlife Federation’s “Attracting Butterflies” page at https://www.nwf.org/Garden-for-Wildlife/Wildlife/Attracting-Butterflies.  If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Louise Senior at drlsenior@gmail.com or the Rutgers Master Gardeners of Mercer County at askthemgs@mercercounty.org or 609-989-6853.

You can view a recording of the webinar on our YouTube channel at https://youtu.be/EG8roKGFv1c.  Also, you can download a copy of the handout with links and plant information at https://www.njstatelib.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Handout.pdf.