Sari ONeal
A Cercis canadensis (eastern redbud) is in full bloom, with a red spotted purple admiral butterfly in morning sunlight.
Photograph by Pimmimemom | Dreamstime
Few creatures, large or small, are more symbolic of spring than butterflies. As a landscape contractor and later a garden center manager, the subject of how to bring more butterflies to your yard has come up often. Over the years, I have developed a simple approach that has worked for many clients and customers. It involves five basic steps.
First, it is best to locate your butterfly garden in full sun. Both the butterflies and the plants they commonly light upon to extract pollen prefer full sun.
Anatoli Dubkov
Butterfly - Eastern Tailed Blue
Everes comyntas (eastern tailed-blue butterfly).
Photograph by Anne Power | Dreamstime
Second, successful butterfly gardens need high and low areas. They need a spot that is slightly lower than the grade of most of your yard, while the rest of the butterfly garden area should be slightly higher. This is, in part, because butterflies need a combination of plants that like wet soil and plants that need good drainage. But it is also because butterflies need a source of water. By having an area slightly below the surrounding grade, you will naturally increase the moisture level in that area.
To further provide for the needs of butterflies, particularly in the hot part of summer, you will also need to provide a “puddling pool,” which you supplement with water from your hose, between rains. That puddling pool should consist of some sort of very shallow container, like a low bird bath bowl, recessed in the ground, filled at least halfway with sand or gravel, leaving about a quarter-inch of exposed water on top.
Asimina triloba (pawpaw tree).
Photography by Anne Power | Dreamstime
Third, butterflies like a spot where they can sun themselves. Thus, a low, at least semi-flat, slab of rock or a boulder is really attractive to them. Ideally, it should be sited in the high area of the butterfly garden but not too far from the puddling pool.
Fourth, since each species of butterfly has a specific host plant where they lay their eggs, and later, where the caterpillars feed, the more of these specific host plants you have in or near your butterfly garden, the more butterflies you are likely to have. Of course, some of these host plants are trees. Since trees in your butterfly garden would decrease the sunlight, you’ll want to locate these trees in other parts of your yard or determine whether land adjacent to yours already has these trees.
Eurytides marcellus (zebra swallowtail butterfly) is the state butterfly of Tennessee.
Photograph by Ruby Rayne | Dreamstime
For example, you might consider whether there is a Cercis canadensis (eastern redbud) somewhere nearby, or plant one somewhere in your yard to host the Everes comyntas (eastern tailed-blue butterfly). If you do decide to plant an Eastern Redbud, by the way, you might try the great new cultivar, discovered right here in Tennessee by Ray and Cindy Jackson just a few years ago, called Cercis canadensis “JN2” (rising sun eastern redbud).
Similarly, it would be nice to have some Asimina triloba (pawpaw trees) nearby to host the Eurytides marcellus (zebra swallowtail butterfly), which is, by the way, the state butterfly of Tennessee. Since pawpaws do best as under-canopy (shade) trees, and since you always need at least two for fruit production anyway, you’ll likely want to site these in some other area entirely on your property, if you can’t find them already nearby. If you decide to acquire some pawpaw trees, look for one of the Peterson hybrids and buy the most mature trees you can afford, since they often take a few years to start bearing fruit.
For a list of specific Tennessee native host plants and the butterflies they host, look to page 192 of Suzy Askew’s recent book, Native Plants of Tennessee: A Book of Lists. There are, of course, many non-native host plants as well and the internet is filled with information about them.
A few host plants that I consider essential, in part because they are easy to obtain, include Asclepias incarnata (swamp milkweed) for hosting Danaus plexippus (monarch butterfly), Hibiscus moscheutos (swamp rose mallow) for hosting Strymon melinus (common hairstreak butterfly), Passiflora incarnata (passion vine) for hosting Agraulis vanillae (gulf frittilary butterfly), and Foeniculum vulgare (bronze fennel) for hosting Papilio polyxenes (black swallowtail butterfly).
Fifth, plant lots of flowering perennials and annuals, with a preference for those that are native to our region, those upon which our native butterflies have been landing and deriving pollen from for centuries. Some of my favorite include Echinacea purperea (tomato soup coneflower; plant in a high spot), Baptisia x “Carolina Moonlight” (Carolina moonlight false indigo; plant in a high spot), Phlox paniculata (jeana garden phlox), Salvia gregii (Furman’s autumn red sage; plant in a high spot), Eutrochium dubium (dwarf joe pye weed; plant in a low and moist spot, near your puddling pool.)
But, these are just a few of the hundreds — maybe even thousands — of flowering plants that might attract butterflies to your yard, providing them with the nectar and pollen they crave.
Finally, though this might seem obvious, remember that butterflies are insects. Pesticides of any kind will likely kill them or, at the very least, deter them from adding life and color to your garden.
