Gardening for Butterflies - a novice attempt

Did you know that most butterflies have a life-span of about two weeks? Did you know that natural butterfly habitats are on the decline? Thankfully there are gardeners who are also avid butterfly watchers, willing to cultivate plants for butterflies and caterpillars. Fortunately, the plants butterflies prefer are also some of the prettiest-blooming plants, with sweet nectar and large gorgeous blooms, so even if the butterflies aren't swarming, there's plenty to see.

In June, after my glorious time with the butterflies in Colorado, I finally began working on a space in my yard butterfly-friendly plants. Of course, I'm not so great at planning when it comes to gardening, so I bought my plants before figuring out where to put them, then I dug up a space next to our driveway - one of the few partial to full sun areas in our yard - and planted my new flowers:

 Just after planting

 All the plants labelled

A few weeks later I moved the Hibiscus over since I looked at the tag and realized it needed a lot more space than I gave it originally, and one of the Bella Blue plants has died, but otherwise all have faired relatively well, considering my lack of green thumb.

 Phlox

 Bee Balm

 Dwarf Butterfly Bush

Daylily

Hibiscus

I didn't get any good pictures of the milkweed blooming as I am having troubles with scale bugs taking over and sucking all the juices from it - actually, they nearly killed the butterfly bush before they took over the milkweed. A daily hosedown of the plants has really helped keep that under control, and today I found a ladybeetle on the plant, hopefully gobbling up all those icky orange buggers.

Do you have a butterfly garden? What plants have you had success with?

All photos copyright Katrina Kouba Boles

Next post: critters in my garden!

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