Gardening with Chloe – Attracting Butterflies

Welcome to our first post on Gardening with Chloe. Both Chloe and I are super excited to start the series with an inspirational gardener- Carole Brown from Ecosystem Gardening

Carole is a Conservation Biologist and passionate about teaching people to manage their properties to benefit the environment, conserve natural resources, and create wonderful habitats for the wildlife around them.

With butterflies being one of our favourites insects for obvious reasons,  we asked Carole if she could share her wealth of knowledge and resources on how to attract these magical creatures to our gardens. Chloe and I hope your children have the opportunity to dance with the butterflies in your garden or local park.

First, thanks to Chloe the Gardener and Marghanita for inviting me to write for you. I am honored to be here! Butterflies are like flying jewels, floating and swirling throughout your garden. And the good news is that it’s really quite easy to create habitats for them in your garden. Butterfly gardening is a magical and exciting way to interest your children in the wonders of nature.

When you are planning your butterfly garden, the first step is learning which butterflies live in your area so that you will know what to expect. It used to be that I would sit for hours with a butterfly field guide, making a list of butterflies in my area one by one as I checked the range map for each species. Fortunately, none of us has to do that anymore! Here’s a list of several places where you can get a list for your state:

1. Butterflies and Moths of North America has a great interactive map where you can click to get a list of butterflies for each state in the U. S. as well as Mexico. It’s only odd that they do not provide the same capability for Canada as well. After you get a list for your state, you can click on each species to see what their needs are.
2. For the butterfly species in Canada I’ve found a wonderful site called, ironically enough, Butterflies of Canada. This site is full of wonderful information for attracting all manner of butterflies.
3. And the North American Butterfly Association has a fabulous site dedicated to butterfly habitat gardening.

Now that you know which butterflies may be in your area, the next step is to determine if any of them are endangered because they need all the help we can give them. I do this by typing the name of my state followed by “endangered butterflies” into Google search. For example, I live in Pennsylvania, and the list of endangered butterflies that I found on Google included the Pipevine Swallowtail. This butterfly must have Pipevine (Aristolochia tomentosa) for its caterpillars to feed on, so I have planted that in my garden. When most people think of butterfly gardens, they think of plants with lots of nectar because that is what most adult butterflies feed on. But every species of butterfly is dependent on only one plant (or one plant family) for its caterpillars to feed from. So if you truly want to provide for butterflies in your garden, you must provide the correct host plant for the butterflies you want to attract. For example, Monarch butterflies must have milkweed (Aesclepias family) to ensure its survival.

Many skippers feed on various grasses and many butterfly caterpillars feed on various trees and shrubs, so you have to begin to think beyond flowers. Here are some references for getting the most bang for you garden buck by choosing plants that support the highest number of butterflies, plus a resource for locating a nursery that carries these native plants:

1. Top 10 Best Woody Plants for the Butterfly Garden
2. Top 10 Best Herbaceous Plants for the Butterfly Garden
3. Native Plant Nurseries in the U.S. and Canada

Part of the excitement of butterfly gardening is having your kids search for butterfly eggs which are really tiny, so you have to practice looking at each host plant to find them.

After the eggs hatch, teeny tiny caterpillars emerge which will grow bigger and bigger the more they eat. They cannot grow to the right size if there’s not enough food for them, so plant enough to feed these little piggies!

When the caterpillar reaches the right size, it makes a chrysalis where it will stay until it is ready to become a butterfly. These are sometimes hard to find, but again practice teaches you and your kids what to look for.

If you’re really looking, you may be lucky enough to see the new butterfly crawl out of its chrysalis and spread its wings in the sun to let them dry. These cold winter months are the perfect time to start planning your new butterfly garden, remembering that you need to find the right host plants in addition to planting lots of nectar plants for adult butterflies.

[Carole Brown is the author of Ecosystem Gardening, where she teaches you to garden sustainable, conserve natural resources, and create welcoming habitats for wildlife in your garden. Follow her on twitter.]

Tagged as: attracting butterflies to your garden, butterflies, Chloe, chloe the gardener, connecting kids to nature, conservation gardening, eco, flowers, fun outdoors, gardening, gardening with kids, green, green gardening, insects, kids, natural, Nature, wildlife, wildlife garden