How to Design a Butterfly Garden in Florida

Include adult and larval host plants. Don't just be a stop-by on the great migration highway. Be a settle-in-for-the-season destination. Plant bushes and flowers that provide nectar for adult butterflies as well as the plants they love to leave their eggs on. Buddleia, or butterfly bushes, are favorite nectar stops for most species. Monarchs lay their eggs on milkweed plants. Pipevine swallowtails use Virginia snakeroot and all pipevine plants as host plants.

Select native plants to have caterpillars happily munching away and bright butterflies fluttering around the flowers. Most of the larval favorites are natives, and all the native butterfly plants will grow and survive better than exotic imports. Plant sassafras and spicebush to attract showy spicebush swallowtails. Invite other swallowtails with wild lime, common rue, chokecherry, tulip trees, pipevine, paw paws and parsley. Create feeding stations of favored nectar plants like butterfly bush, hibiscus, salvia, milkweed, day lilies and coneflowers.

Plant high and low and don't forget the middle height to create microclimates for a variety of butterflies. Buddleia bushes will grow as tall as 10 or more feet. Rue grows from 3 to 5 feet tall. Day lilies are shorter still and parsley is low and bushy. The insects will hover at different levels for any number of reasons, from crowded nectar spots to sun or shade to protection from exposure to predators. Use horizontal swaths of plants, vertical climbing vines like honeysuckle and dense plantings to create shelter. Butterflies are high on the treat list for many birds and lizards. Variety in planting means everyone gets a fair shot at dinner and survival to flutter by another day.

Select some plants for their hue and some for shape to please every visitor. Butterflies are a marvel of color and form and so are the plants they love best. Butterflies with a long proboscis, the feeding tube used to suck nectar, prefer tube-shaped flowers that are not picked over by just anybody. Lure lots of little butterflies with open-faced flowers, like Gerbera daisies, that make it easy to get at the nectar. Remember that butterflies are not colorblind. They are wizards at spotting the colors of their favorite foods so plant for plenty of color in your butterfly garden. Reds, pinks and purples attract butterflies and hummingbirds. Butterflies also like blue, yellow, orange and white flowers.

Add a water feature and some basking spots. A simple burbling fountain lures the right kinds of insects to a butterfly garden. Prevent mosquitoes from laying eggs by keeping the water moving. Keep the water cleaner with the constant aeration of the fountain. Butterflies need water and they will perch on the edge of a basin and sip. Provide a warm basking rock in the sun and you will find them taking a break on it in the middle of the day. Create multiple options to meet all the needs of butterflies, and you will enjoy generations of delicate beauty season after season.