TTMA butterfly gardens

[rainbowsockmonkey]

I don't garden (I killed a cactus once). I only have hostas, peonies, some daisies, and 1 rose bush that isnt doing too well at my house.

Dh wants to put put in a butterfly garden behind our garage next year, and im ok with it. We are in southern MN and the space gets light all morning and most of the day, so sunlight shouldnt be too much of a problem. Any tgoughts or ideas of what plants we ahould consider putting in? Id prefer plants that i can plant 1 time and dont have to keep putting in each year.

Size will probably be determined next spring when we actually start working on it.

[Lakes]

Yay! I have a pollinator garden. I try to stick with native plants. It’s important to stick to the straight species. Many of the cultivars have low or no pollen, the blooms are more difficult for pollinators to access, etc. Succession planting is recommended so there’s always something blooming. It’s important to remember host plants for caterpillars too! So many people just think about flowers and forget about those poor little caterpillars. I’ve joined a couple Facebook groups specific to my state for pollinator gardens or native plants and they’ve been very helpful. I’ve bought many native plants from local Arboretums and gardens so check there. The staff is often so knowledgeable and helpful.

I’m on the east coast so I’m not sure what’s native for your area but my coneflowers have done well and require zero effort. Butterfly Weed, Joe Pye Weed, and Iron Weed always seem to be popular with the pollinators.

Here’s a couple databases I use:

www.wildflower.org/collections/

www.audubon.org//native-plants

Audubon is mostly for birds but they have tags for butterflies and caterpillars too. Plus I love seeing the goldfinches all over my coneflowers!

Prairie Moon Nursery is a useful resource and I’ve ordered seeds from them. They are recommended a lot in on of the fb groups.


ETA: here’s another one
www.nwf.org/NativePlantFinder/

[Lakes]

Herbs too! I know dill and parsley are very popular with the swallowtail butterfly caterpillars.

[Lakes]

This popped up in one of my groups today.

www.plantnative.org/national_nursery_dir_main.htm

[Lakes]

Ooooo this one is fun if you wanted to attract a specific butterfly. You can search down to your specific county. For each butterfly it lists the caterpillar’s host plants and favorite flowers for the butterfly.

www.butterfliesandmoths.org/checklists

[mrsweasley]

I'm starting to make tentative plans to do this next year too. Check with local colleges/universities and see if they have any extensions or classes. We have a class coming up locally for tips on planting native species.

[AmyG]

some caterpillars like marshmallow leave and hollyhock so I'd consider putting in some hollyhock plants.
I know this because the boys got a grow caterpillars into butterflies thingy for christmas one year,
so we grew the caterpillars we got in the mail and they cocooned and turned into beautiful butterflies.
we must have waited too long to release them, because then we realized the habitat was FULL of baby caterpillars.
Which the directions said to just dicard, but who could do that?

So we did research to learn they liked the wild marshmallow (weed) plant leaves, and the flower hollyhock leaves we had in the yard, and gosh we grew up sooo many butterflies, gave the caterpillars to sooo many of my son's friends. got some science fair projects out of them too