Butterflies are stunning and are among the best pollinators, so it’s only natural to want them as visitors to your garden. However, to attract butterflies to your yard space, you will need to study them and find the best ways to attract butterflies.
Here they are.
The best ways to attract butterflies are to:
- Create shallow water sources that are safe for butterflies to land in (puddles, salt licks, or sugar water).
- Plant flowers they love and that bloom from spring into fall.
- Remove the dead blooms.
- Provide places for them to get sun.
- Plant host plants.
- Garden organically.
- And shelter them from predators and the elements.
Who Can Attract Butterflies To Their Garden
Attracting butterflies to your garden is an endeavor that is within the capabilities of anyone! It’s a similar situation to when you (as a gardener) spread out birdseed and the birds find it. Once you set out to attract butterflies, butterflies will come!
How Difficult Is It To Attract Butterflies To Your Garden?
The success of successfully attracting butterflies to your garden is an individual garden issue, along with your willingness to properly perform the steps to attracting butterflies.
For instance, it would be best if your garden was sunny (because butterflies love the sun). Otherwise, putting out food and feeders will not be very beneficial.
Additionally, you should try to stay consistent. The more consistent you are, the more consistent the butterflies will be. If you are putting out food, have a regular schedule for putting out the food.
How Long Does It Take To Attract Butterflies To Your Garden?
The duration of attracting butterflies to your garden differs according to the time of year.
In most climates, butterfly populations will be at their highest point in typical mid July. Specifically, mid July occurs after spring rains have fallen, and is typically sunny.
At this point in the summer, many caterpillars will have metamorphed into butterflies.
Flowers Help
Planting and caring for butterfly-friendly flowers will also accelerate the time before you see the butterflies. Flowers with smells and colors that attract butterflies are also familiar to them.
You may only see a couple of butterflies at first. However, after a week, you may see five or so and then more. I have seen as many as seven butterflies on a perfect sunny day!
Garden Size Helps
When it comes to the size of your garden, the bigger it is, the greater and sooner your chance of having butterflies.
How big of a garden (or butterfly garden) you decide to have, is up to you. But the more flowers butterflies have to choose from, the better your chances they will arrive sooner.
Feeders May Take A Little Longer (But Still Help)
Butterflies may take a while to learn that a feeder is a food source. They are designed and conditioned to see flowers and salt licks as their food.
They don’t really know what to make of something that they see as new, and they may be confused or cautious.
It might take a week, two, three, or even more before your first butterfly shows up to your feeder. Don’t give up! Once they learn that this is a safe and reliable food source, they will show up on a regular basis (you can even make your own).
Why Attract Butterflies To Your Garden (In More Detail)
There are two important reasons to attract butterflies to your garden, starting with their beauty.
Butterfly Beauty Elevates Your Garden’s Beauty
Butterflies are beautiful, fragile creatures. Their exquisite colors and patterns are so unique! Their graceful, fluttering movements are captivating; just having a group of butterflies in your yard can turn the mundane into the magical.
The beauty of a butterfly is attractive, in turn attracting more beauty to a garden.
Also, the beauty of so many butterflies in one place may entice you to want to touch or catch one! You can, but you have to be prepared and delicate.
Butterflies Increase Your Plants’ Harvest
If you weren’t aware, butterflies are among nature’s most active pollinators. Just like bees, they travel from flower to flower, non-aggressively procuring nectar with their long straws-like appendage, or proboscis.
While procuring the nectar, they inadvertently pick up a significant amount of pollen on their legs, body, and proboscis. The pollen comes from the flower’s anthers (the male portion of the flower).
They unsuspectingly transfer this pollen from flower to flower and is left on the stigma (the female portion of the flower). This pollination process fertilizes the flower and enables the flower to develop seeds and fruit.
More simply put, the more butterflies and pollinators you have to work in your yard, the bigger your harvest will be.
10 Best Ways To Attract Butterflies To Your Garden
As a result, you want to entice butterflies to your backyard. Fortunately, there are many simple ways to attract butterflies to your space.
Let’s dive in!
Give Butterflies Water
Because butterflies do not get all their moisture from nectar, they need another source of hydration. Luckily, you can help them with some sand and water.
Before going any further, please be aware however, butterflies can’t land on water. If they do, they risk drowning, especially if there is any movement in the water.
For this reason, butterflies prefer a mud puddle to a pond with deep water or a birdbath many inches deep.
When a butterfly hovers over a puddle or mud site and lands to drink; this is called puddling. The soil in the puddle provides the butterfly with a surface to safely land to drink, unlike a deeper body of water.
If you would like to create a butterfly safe puddle, follow these steps:
- Fill a shallow dish (or similar item) a few inches with sand to give the butterflies a sturdy landing pad.
- Add water to the sand (a few centimeters) until the sand shows just a shine of water on the surface.
- Then place the dish in a sunny place (the reflection will attract a butterfly’s attention while the sun keeps them warm while they drink).
Make A Butterfly Salt Lick
Butterflies gain many nutrients from nectar; however, sodium is not one of those nutrients. Therefore, butterflies must supplement their diet with something salty.
Often, butterflies will acquire salt from the “puddling” mentioned earlier in this post. If there is not a mud puddle available, butterflies will find salt in manure or sweat.
You can provide them with an easier, more promising alternative: a salt lick. To create a salt lick, recreate a butterfly-safe “mud puddle”, following the same steps as above, but mix one or two tablespoons (tbsp) of salt with the sand before adding the water.
Be patient. It may take a few days to a week to see results but you will have butterflies puddling from your salt lick in no time!
Mix Up Some Sugar Water
Did you know that it’s possible to make sugar water to feed butterflies, just like you can for hummingbirds?
To make sugar water, here are the steps:
- Dissolve approximately three teaspoons (tsp) of sugar into one cup of water. I find that two cups is usually sufficient to fill my feeder.
- Bring the sugar/water mixture to a boil until it is totally dissolved in the water.
- Once cooled, pour the sugar water into your butterfly feeder.
I would recommend getting a feeder. There are some great options out there to choose from, and it will create efficiencies in time than making one. But making ones can also be a fun thing to do!
Make Sure Your Yard Is In Bloom Spring Through Fall
In spring, butterflies begin to come out of the chrysalises or cocoons. In the fall, butterflies will leave when there are not many flowers and the air starts getting cooler.
To have butterflies at that time, you need a continuous feeding source (butterflies will be eating the nectar from flowers).
This means you will need to plant a variety of perennials (plants that come up every spring) and annuals (plants that only last for one growing season each year). By planting that variety, you have flowers for butterflies from spring-fall.
Plant Flowers Butterflies Love (And You Will Too)
Flowers are key to attracting butterflies to your yard. Butterflies use nectar as their primary source of food and use flowers to re-energize themselves. There are differing amounts of nectar in some flowers, and their scent and colors also attract them.
Just a quick side note: Flowers will attract other pollinators, like bees, but fortunately, you can avoid this with the right types of flowers, such as petunias and geraniums!
The flowers listed below are some of the best types to plant to attract butterflies.
Lavender
Lavender grows in clusters of purple spires with small, conical blooms. Butterflies and humans are drawn to its strong scent, and we use lavender for aromatherapy, soaps, and oils.
In warmer zones, lavender blooms as early as May, and in other areas, it blooms in June. In climate-dependent areas of the United States, lavender sometimes only blooms once a year, while in some areas it has flushes and blooms two to three times a year.
Roses
Roses are lovely, traditional blooms that possess a number of intricately layered petals and also have a center bursting full of sweet nectar. Roses come in many exciting colors that butterflies will love, and they will continue to bloom multiple times from May to October!
Floss Flowers
Floss flowers appear in a ball shape and have a fuzzy appearance in hues of purple, blue, red, white, or pink.
The colors are bright, and the fluffy flowers are loaded with nectar, attracting butterflies from far and wide! Floss flowers will bloom from mid-summer through fall.
Privet Flowers
Privet flowers bloom in grape-like clusters and have a sweet, delicate fragrance. Their small, conical flowers are also very attractive to butterflies, plus they have rich nectar. Privet flowers bloom late spring (May-June).
False Indigo
False Indigo’s soft blue blooms grow in spikes that resemble little butterfly wings. Blue is one of the more attractive colors for butterflies, and they love the richly nectar-filled blossoms of this plant. False Indigo blooms in late spring.
Goldenrod
Goldenrod grows in impressive clusters of fluffy yellow flowers – a bright color that is favored by butterflies. It is also full of nectar, making it a great food source for butterflies. Goldenrod flowers from late summer into early fall.
Cornflowers
Have you heard the term, “cornflower blue”? Cornflower blue got its name from cornflowers, which are such a lovely blue! Cornflowers are popular with both people and butterflies because of their color and sweet fragrance.
They always have nectar available for the butterflies. You can expect cornflowers to bloom in early to midsummer!
Bee Balm
Butterflies are attracted to bee balm due to its stunning red color and high volume of nectar. You can anticipate a striking flowering plant in your garden too if you plant it in the spring, where it will bloom in mid-to-late summer.
Peonies
Peonies bear a likeness to roses with their thick layered petals and come in a variety of colors. The blooms are sugar-sweet smelling with lots of nectar, which attracts butterflies. Peonies bloom from late spring into summer.
Sunflowers
Sunflowers are giant flowers that generate the yummy sunflower seeds we love. They also entice butterflies with their aromatic sap (nectar), and vibrant yellow color. Sunflowers bloom from July to August, smack in the middle of summer.
Daylilies
Daylily flowers have large, showy flowers that a lot of people love. Butterflies put daylilies on their favorites list, too, largely due to the high nectar content of daylilies. Daylilies are some of the first flowers to bloom in the spring (March-April).
Garden Phlox
Lastly, garden phlox produces clusters of broad, flat flowers with deep gaps between the petals that accumulated pools of nectar. Butterflies flock to it as if they were moths to a flame, and it blooms from mid to late summer.
Remove Dead Blooms
Butterflies prefer fresh blooms to wilted, as wilted flowers do not have much, if any, nectar for them.
When you deadhead your plants (remove dead blooms), you take away energy and space from the plant, which allows the plant to produce new blooms, and therefore providing nectar for butterflies.
Help Butterflies Get Sun
Butterflies love the sun, and they get cold quickly. When planting for butterflies, they will readily use sunny areas for nectar. The sunnier, the better.
You could also incorporate sun-basking stones. The best sun-basking stones are wide, flat, and gray. Do not use black stones, as they can get too warm.
Put the stones among your flowers in the sun, and butterflies will land on the stones to warm their bodies.
Plant Host Plants (For Caterpillars)
Butterflies rely on plants for more than nectar; caterpillars (which develop into butterflies) consume only specific plants, which means that butterflies will only lay their caterpillar eggs on host plants, and planting these host plants will increase your chances of seeing butterflies and caterpillars in the spring and summer months!
To help, here’s a list of host plants for several butterflies:
- Dill And Fennel: Attracts black and anise swallowtail butterflies
- Spice Bushes: Attracts spice swallowtail butterflies
- Passion Vines: Attracts gulf fritillary (passion butterfly)
- Milkweed: Attracts monarch butterflies
- Asters: Attracts the pearl crescent and painted lady
Keep It Natural
Butterflies are delicate animals. They can be significantly affected by any chemicals that are damaging, including pesticides.
So if you really want to attract butterflies to your garden, make sure your plants are safe to land on and drink from. An organic garden is preferable as it does not include harsh or artificial chemicals.
Give Butterflies Shelter
Butterflies may be hunted by birds, insects, reptiles, and more. In order to survive, butterflies need plenty of shelter. If you provide them with shelter, they have another reason to choose to land in your garden.
Some people spend money on butterfly houses but, in my opinion, butterflies prefer something simpler. Natural objects such as logs, rock piles, and tall grass (don’t weed all of it) will work just fine.
Final Advice
Then you have a ton of choices for luring in butterflies into your gardening space. Remember that you are free to try a few of these to see how they fare and then add more if you feel like your butterfly bug needs more support.