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Community Corner

Take Your Garden to New Heights

Plant Suggestions and Tips for Attracting Butterflies to Your Garden

Who doesn’t enjoy seeing butterflies flitting around in their garden? Creating a garden that is inviting to butterflies involves more than simply planting a few colorful flowers. Your garden must meet all of a butterfly’s needs– food, water, shelter and a place to lay their eggs and overwinter, if needed.

Butterfly Basics

The majority of butterflies are picky about where they will lay their eggs. They look for specific plants that will feed their young during their larval (caterpillar) stages. Caterpillars will eat the leaves of these host plants but the damage is minor and purely cosmetic.

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Providing host plants greatly increasing your chances of attracting butterflies since they will be able to complete their entire life cycle right in your garden. Host plants for some common Connecticut butterflies include butterfly weed (Asclepias) for monarchs, sassafras (Sassafras albidum) for spicebush swallowtail, willow (Salix) for eastern tiger swallowtail and little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium) for many grass skippers and satyrs.

Most butterflies drink nectar, although some prefer tree sap or rotting fruit. When it comes to nectar sources, many butterflies are generalists. They will happily drink nectar from a plethora of plants. Butterflies seem to prefer flowers with strong scents and bright vibrant colors that are typically flat-topped (Eupatorium) or clustered (Agastache). Plant a variety of butterfly attracting plants in an array of colors, flower shapes and sizes that bloom sequentially throughout the summer and into the fall to attract the widest assortment of butterflies.

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Butterflies need to a place to warm up and sun themselves so place flat stones in a few sunny locations in your garden.  Water is also essential for butterflies but they seem to prefer a small muddy or sandy area that stays moist, rather than the open water of a traditional bird bath.

Design and Maintenance Considerations

When you’re ready to plant your butterfly-attracting plants, remember to group similar ones together for maximum effect. A cluster of three of the same plant is more appealing to butterflies than three different ones planted near each other. This is especially true for larval host plants. Following this design principle will also make your garden more attractive since it will flow more naturally.

Pay attention to the plants your butterflies seems to enjoy and plant more of them. Once you learn which butterflies are frequent visitors, plant appropriate host plants. If you notice a particular host plant has lots of larvae on it, plant more of it for next season.

Chances are some of a butterfly’s basic needs are already being met by your garden. Trees and shrubs of varying sizes provide shelter from the elements. Mulch and small brush piles are ideal overwintering spots for those butterflies that do not migrate south.

Butterflies and caterpillars are highly sensitive to chemicals so ban the use of any toxic substances in your garden. Even Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis), a popular organic pesticide, is harmful to butterflies and caterpillars. To keep the ‘bad guys’ at bay, choose plants that naturally attract beneficial insects. Good choices for Connecticut gardeners include fennel, dill, coreopsis and yarrow.

For much more information about Connecticut butterflies and specific plants to attract them, visit the Connecticut Butterfly Association.

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