Even if you don’t love bugs, you probably love butterflies! These winged beauties are important pollinators, like bees and hummingbirds, and there’s nothing sweeter than watching them flutter around your garden on a summer morning, sipping from flowers or sunning themselves on rocks. These beautiful insects actually are covered with tiny overlapping scales, like the shingles on a roof. With more than 700 species native to North America, you’ll see many different types in your own back yard, especially if you plant flowers that attract butterflies. Each region of the country has at least 100 species found locally. You even can buy butterfly kits to raise them yourself. Watching these creatures grow can be an educational (and fun!) experiment for the whole family.
Here’s what you need to know to provide a habitat for these garden gems:
Understand their lifespans.
Butterflies go through four stages: Egg, caterpillar (larva), pupa, and adult. The egg hatches and becomes the caterpillar. Within weeks, the caterpillar attaches to a leaf and begins creating its chrysalis, a protective shell. In another week or so, the pupa inside completes its metamorphosis to butterfly, emerging in search of food and a mate. Most butterflies live about a month, though some types can live up to 9 months and migrate to warmer climates when cold weather arrives.
Attract them with the right environment.
Enticing these gorgeous creatures to your garden isn’t difficult. They love pretty flowers, just like you do, and will sip the nectar with their straw-like tongues. Plant a variety of flowers with different colors, shapes, flower depths, and bloom times. And plant in large swathes, rather than a single plant, to catch their attention more easily. Also, provide a shallow water source, such as a birdbath with a stone in it, so they can stop and sip. In addition, try to eliminate or limit the use of pesticides, which kill both beneficial and unwanted bugs.
Give them different kinds of plants.
Butterflies like annuals, perennials (which come back every year), and flowering shrubs. Plants they love include easy-to-grow annuals such as zinnias, marigolds, and lantana, and hardy perennials such as salvia and bee balm. Flowering shrubs such as spice bush, lilac, abelia, and butterfly bush also are good options. Check with your local botanical garden or university coop extension service (find yours here) to learn what other plants grow best in your region to attract butterflies.
Butterflies in the caterpillar stage need food, too! For example, Monarchs lay eggs only on milkweed, which the caterpillars munch on when they hatch. Black swallowtails prefer parsley or dill. Painted ladies like hollyhocks. If you’re trying to attract a certain type of butterfly, choose plants that they’ll enjoy in all their life stages. Identify what’s common in your area here.
Consider raising butterflies.
Raising butterflies is a fascinating family project! You may be able to find eggs in your back yard, so you can snip off the leaf to which they are attached and place in a special pop-up mesh butterfly tent. But if you can’t find eggs, a few companies sell kits so you can grow your own butterflies. Some kits are shipped with live caterpillars, and others come with a voucher (and sometimes a small additional shipping charge) so you can request the caterpillars when you're ready for them.
Once your butterflies appear, release them when their wings are dry (the kit should offer advice about the best time to do so). Don’t wait too long. Otherwise, they’ll mate and start laying eggs, which turn into hundreds of tiny caterpillars. And that may not be quite the experience you had in mind!