Plant a garden for butterflies

Why plant a butterfly garden?

Photo: Julie Wiatt

How to attract butterflies

Nectar Plants are the sun-loving plants we see adult butterflies feeding on, sucking nectar through their long nose-like proboscis, and an assortment of nectar plants will attract dozens of butterflies to your garden. Eric Raun, a Silver Spring butterfly expert, recorded 32 species feeding on his butterfly bushes alone — the most of any plant. (If you're worried about your butterfly bushes spreading, just remove the dead flowers. That will prevent their reseeding and encourage reblooms.) Runners-up in Raun's garden were nonnatives verbena, marigold, zinnia, salvia, globe amaranth, and white clover and natives wild ageratum, milkweed, and blackeyed Susan.

Photo: Julie Wiatt

Host Plants are used by butterflies as places to lay their eggs, and then as food by the emerging caterpillars, and including some in your garden will attract even more species. But butterflies are often very picky about which plants they use as hosts, unlike their more generic tastes in nectar plants. For example, the Monarch caterpillars will only eat the milkweed plant. Most host plants, like milkweed, are also weedier, less attractive and harder to find than nectar plants, so local butterfly expert Denise Gibbs often recommends simply adding fennel and dill to your garden as an easy way to provide host plants. And because host plants suffer the effects of heavy munching, you may want to put them in less visible spots. Some of the more ornamental host plants for our area are aster, sedums, and snapdragons.

All butterfly-attracting plants, whether nectar or host, should be massed in groups of three or more so they can be seen by these near-sighted insects, but be sure to provide a diversity of plants to attract lots of species. And because butterflies feed from spring to fall, select plants with a variety of booming times.

Other attractants. Many butterflies love to suck liquid from moist soil, an activity called puddling. You can create a puddle by burying a sand-filled container in the ground (a shallow saucer or birdbath will do) and periodically adding stale beer, sweet drinks or water. Some species feed on overripe fruit, but be warned that yellow jackets are equally attracted to them. Butterfly houses are more decorative than effective, generally attracting more wasps than their intended guests. And flat rocks or patches of dirt in protected spots provide places for butterflies to warm themselves in the morning.

Gardening Practices

• Avoid the use of insecticides. Populations of many species have been reduced by insecticides, especially sprays to control gypsy moths and mosquitoes.


• "Weeds" like clover, violets and dandelions are excellent food for butterflies, so consider relaxing your definition of the perfect lawn to include something for the insects. It'll help our threatened honeybee friends, too.


• Garden clean-up? Not so much. Some butterflies overwinter as larvae or pupae in leaf litter at the base of host plants, so leave at least a light leaf covering around them until early spring.

Watching

On sunny days it's fun to watch adult butterflies feeding and puddling, for which they'll stay in place long enough to offer some awesome photo ops. On cool sunny mornings, they'll also hang out on those rocks you've provided for them, warming their muscles enough for flight. There are 239 known species of butterflies and moths in Maryland, so get yourself a pair of binoculars and a field guide, and start your list!

Sources

• The Washington Area Butterfly Club has field trips, a listserv for local sightings and news, and a Guide for Beginners. Their excellent site — http://users.sitestar.net/butterfly — is your starting point for everything you need to know, including lists of species and the exact plants that will attract them to your garden.


• Eric Raun's Butterfly Gardening in Silver Spring website is a gem — http://mysite.verizon.net/vze8fvo3.


• The butterfly forum on GardenWeb, http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/butterfly, also has cool postings of tagged butterflies sighted on their migration path back to Maryland in the spring.


• The Audubon Naturalist Society (www.audubonnaturalist.org) is another great resource.


• Wings and Wildflowers Nursery in Gaithersburg has a half-acre demonstration garden to help visitors select butterfly-attracting plants that fit into their garden schemes. Call owner Denise Gibbs at 301/253-6903 for an appointment.

Events

• April 26, 7:30 p.m., at Woodend, the Audubon Society's headquarters in Bethesda, "Butterfly Habitats on the East Coast" Free.


• June 2, 9-2, Butterfly Basics, an Audobon Naturalist event, also free.

Join the "Save the Monarch" movement

My visit to Monarchwatch.org left me impressed by the organization but curious to know why all the attention to Monarchs. Eric Raun kindly explained that they're big, easily identifiable, and their migration habits are cool. Not to mention the very real threat to their existence from decreasing winter habitat areas in Mexico and the use of pesticides by farmers in the U.S. In fact, 90 percent of Monarch habitats are agricultural and disappearing at the rate of 3,000 acres/day, and their roadside habitats are destroyed by herbicides and frequent mowing. Gee, it sure would help — and save oodles of tax dollars — if we just let our roadsides go au natural!

Master Gardener Susan Harris writes about horticulture for UDC's Cooperative Extension Service and online at Takomagardener.com and Gardenrant.com.   She also teaches privately — see Thegardeningcoach.com. Visit her new site DC-Urban-Gardeners.com for local resources, links, and more.

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