Over the last few months, we have been working on our butterfly garden. I worried that even though we planted the garden, that the butterflies would not come. Friends have told me that they have not had success with butterfly gardens. I am confident that the reason MUST be their pesticide use.

It is imperative that weed killers and other pesticides are NOT used anywhere near your butterfly garden. Actually, they should not be used at all.

The very weekend that we planted our backyard islands, we could see butterflies flying around them. The plants that we used were:

Milkweed: This is one of the BEST plants you could possibly have in your butterfly garden. The monarch butterflies LOVE it. We seem to see various butterflies around this plant throughout the day. This is the larval host plant for the Monarch Butterfly. Unfortunately, the monarch caterpillars in our yard don’t last very long due to the hungry wasps. I created a little “butterfly nursery” out of a spiral pop-up hamper that I bring the baby caterpillars to so that they will not be eaten. Inside the hamper, I have 3 small milkweed plants. These are more beautiful than I thought they would be.

Passion Vine: This is another absolute MUST in your butterfly garden. The passion vine is a host plant to 3 kinds of butterflies. Gulf Fritillary butterfly, Julia butterfly, and the Zebra Longwing butterfly. So far, we have only seen the Gulf Fritillary caterpillars and butterflies. They don’t have any predators in my yard, so there are tons of caterpillars on it. You can see the holes on the leaves made by the caterpillars. You may be able to see some of the Gulf Fritillary caterpillars in the photo (they are orange with black spikes).

Lantana: We are using two kinds of Lantana in our yard (pink/yellow flowers and orange/red flowers). They all have beautiful color. They seem to be a popular nectar source for various butterflies.

Pentas: We have pink and red pentas. Our pink ones are established and very popular to the butterflies. I haven’t seen butterflies on the red ones, but they are very small right now.

Pink Porterweed, Cat Whiskers, Swamp Lilly: All good nectar sources for various butterflies.

If you wanted to start a butterfly garden, I would recommend the following plants to start with:

1.) Milkweed (put this throughout your yard, and get LOTS of it)

2.) Passion Vine

3.) Various nectar plants like Pentas, Lantana, and Porterweed. You can have a butterfly garden for very little money by having these plants. Just be sure NOT TO SPRAY anything on or around the plants. This goes for bug spray as well as weed spray.

My family has experienced a lot of joy in watching the butterflies in our yard. I never tire of watching them flutter from flower to flower, knowing that they can live their entire life, happily, here in my yard.