Flying Flowers

The butterfly is a flying flower,
The flower a tethered butterfly.
– Ponce Denis

As the rain has abated and warmer, sunny weather has arrived, most people’s perennials have celebrated with lots of gorgeous blooms.  We are seeing tons of phlox, coneflowers, blanket flowers, day lilies, lavender, daisies, beebalm, Russian sage, spirea and butterfly bushes blooming in gardens all over the city.  Even better, with those standard flowers come “flying flowers” too… a.k.a. butterflies!  If you would like to encourage these delicate friends to visit your garden, remembering a few key facts will help considerably.

First, provide a full sun site (at least 6 hours a day) — the flowers that attract butterflies require lots of sun in order to create stand-out blooms.  Butterflies are attracted to large blocks of color, so grouping your perennials is a great tactic for enticing butterflies to hang out in your yard.  Also, your garden should be relatively sheltered from strong winds.  Butterflies don’t have the capacity to continuously fight winds (or even strong breezes) while they are sipping on nectar, so try to plant your colorful butterfly flowers in a sheltered spot they can relax in.

Second, try to eliminate any natural butterfly predators nearby.  Cats, predatory birds and chemical insecticides are all butterfly enemies and can discourage them from paying you a visit and sticking around.

Third, feed them their favorites!  Butterflies are more attracted to certain perennials and annuals, so turn your garden into a butterfly buffet; tons of their preferred nectars, all within easy reach!  Here we’ve created a handy list of some of the best annuals, perennials and shrubs for butterflies, all of which grow well in Rochester weather and you can find at our garden center.  (It’s a photo, so it’s easy to just click and print the list rather than the entire blog post.

And finally, sometimes folks will plant a variety of butterfly-friendly plants and forget what we think is one of the most important aspects of a butterfly garden — the caterpillar!

Trying to have a butterfly garden without caterpillars is like trying to plant a garden without soil — you just can’t do it, and why would you want to?  Caterpillars are wicked cool to watch, and sacrificing a few leaves from your garden is just how the circle of life works.  The Rochester Butterfly Club has compiled a great list of local plants caterpillars love munching on, so be sure to include some of those in your garden too.  Visit their page and click the “Butterfly Host Plants” link in the top bar.

We began this post with a quote we love, and will sign off the same way.  Here’s to enjoying the flowers AND “flying flowers” in the garden this season!

“Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.”
– Nathaniel Hawthorne