Most gardens get plenty of unwanted insects, but attracting the pretty butterflies will take some deliberate effort, experts say.
Butterflies -- which usually can be seen flying around from early spring through the first frost in the fall -- thrive on certain plants in both the adult butterfly and caterpillar phases of life. Planting the right flowers, shrubs and other plants should attract the colorful flying creatures and add a nice zing to your garden, experts say.
"They look good, they really are pretty and they're a lot of fun," says Sandy Feather, who runs the master gardening program at Penn State Cooperative Extension office in Point Breeze.
Consider these butterfly-attracting tips from Western Pennsylvania gardening gurus.
- Butterflies love flowers with pollen and nectar, and they love bright colors. Think astors, zinnias, ironweed, azaleas, lavender, rhododendron, marigolds, cosmos, black-eyed susans and the butterfly bush, which can grow up to 8 feet tall and is full of blossoms that butterflies love.
"They like things you and I would think of as brightly colored flowers," says Denise Lindberg, owner of Indiana Township-based Gardener's Eye store and garden design business.
- To get more butterflies, which typically only live for a few weeks, nurture the larvae, and the caterpillars will turn into butterflies. Larvae, such as for the monarch butterfly, feed off host plants, such as bronze fennel, spicebush, milkweed and ascelpias.
You might have to put up with some holes in your plants, though, in exchange for nurturing the future butterflies, says Margie Radebaugh, director of education at Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens in Oakland. It takes about three to four weeks for the organisms to blossom from eggs into a butterflies.
- Experts recommend reducing or eliminating the use of pesticides, because along with killing undesirable bugs, they also kill the larvae.
- Butterflies, for reasons not fully understood, seem to be attracted to water. Adding a bird bath, or other water feature, should help attract them, Lindberg says. Butterflies are known for a peculiar behavior called "puddling," where they hover over a muddy or wet spot, Radebaugh says.
- If you get the butterflies you want, enjoy them, but be careful not to scare them away, Radebaugh says.
"It's best not to touch them, to handle them, or to try and catch them," she says. "The main thing is having a variety of plants, so there's things for them to feed on."
