How do I attract butterflies to my garden?
There are an endless number of books dedicated to this topic and if you really want to make an art of it, I suggest investing in one of them. They break down everything a butterfly needs during each stage of its lifecycle in frightening detail. I don't have either the space or the obsessive nature to do that here, so instead I'll focus on some of the highlights.
Butterflies are attracted not just to specific plants, but also to brush, leaf litter and collections of rocks, so a slightly messy garden is a far better lure than one that looks like it's straight out of a magazine.
This presumably is why I have so many butterflies in my garden.
I know what you really want to read here is a list of butterfly-attracting plants for your garden, so here it is: yarrow, hollyhocks, snapdragons, butterfly weed, asters, broccoli, cabbage, currants, gooseberries, bleeding hearts, foxgloves, sunflowers, lupines, penstemons, nasturtiums, butterfly bushes, roses, spireas, Shasta daisies, coreopsis, delphiniums, cornflower, globe thistles, bee balm, and a whole lot more.
The more variety, the greater the chances of turning your garden into a butterfly hotspot.
Keep in mind that butterflies are highly susceptible to pesticides, so unless you know that the one you're using is butterfly safe, lay off the spraying or you could get a nasty lesson in how not to attract butterflies.
If you have any questions or comments, please send them to me at vanessa@gardenmuse.ca.
