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 butter fly. 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.