Which flowers are best for butterflies?

A walk in the woods reveals a host of yellow butterflies

Yesterday afternoon I loaded my 3 dogs into the back of the van, grabbed my camera and headed off to the woods.  The weather was warm and sunny and as soon as I opened the van door I was struck by the scent of the mahonia-like flowers that grow wild in this area.

Stupidly, I got caught up in the moment and left my camera on the passenger seat as Spud, Rosie, Lola and I made our way through the gate and into the wide "rides" of Thetford Forest. We call them rides in Norfolk, in Hertfordshire where I grew up they were called fire breaks. 

Red dead-nettle.  My husband thinks it's a weed.
The butterflies disagree.

In recent years the forest rides have been managed in such a way as to encourage wild flowers to thrive; and it seems to have worked. There are red dead nettles, tiny blue speed wells, dandelions and a myriad of different grass species. But the real spectacle was not the wild flowers, beautiful as they were; it was the butterflies that really captured my attention.

The bright yellow brimstones were in abundance and I'm pretty sure I saw a common blue or two. I did see a lonely orange-tip too.

Comma butterfly.
I found this picture on wildlifeinsight.com

Flying in and out of the trees were several " brown jobs".  They were too high and too fast for an amateur like me to identify but then, joy of joys, one settled, just for a second and I could see the distinctive wing shape of a comma butterfly.

Returning home, I made a brew and took it out into the garden to ponder how I could get such a wonderful display in my own back yard.

Butterflies in the Garden

Honesty growing in my garden - brimstone and orange-tip butterflies seem to love it.

I do have brimstone butterflies in my garden, they like the honesty that grows under the apple tree.  I also get small tortoishells visiting the herbaceous borders.....I think they hibernate in the tool shed. Likewise peacock butterflies and the dreaded cabbage whites are frequent vistitors

Later in the year the sedums, the asters and the verbena bonerensii will bring butterflies in their droves

But as usual, me being me, I want more beautiful butterflies...(but not if they're planning to lay their eggs in me brassicas)!

So I consulted a few books...to see if I' m growing everything I can be growing to attract butterflies.

Good plants for butterflies

Purple and yellow seem to be the butterfly's' favourite colours with pinks and whites coming close second.  They seem to ignore reds.

Don't be afraid to leave a few weeds here and there.  As I saw in the woods, red dead nettle and dandelion are popular with butterflies. We just need to re- tune ourselves to thinking " wild flower" instead of "weed".

Think on several different levels....only last week I was treated to a display of small tortoishells feeding high on a willow tree. Shrubs, trees and hedgerow plants are valuable too.   Have you got a shed? How about covering it with sedum matting to bring in lots more pollinating insects.

Attracting adult butterflies into your garden is great....but remember to have food plants for their babies too.  This is where native plants come into their own. Caterpillars are very fussy eaters!

A list of food plants for caterpillars

Birdsfoot trefoil is a valuable nectar plant for bees and butterflies.
It's also a laval food plant for some butterfly species.

Birds foot trefoil....for dingy skipper caterpillars
Tall grasses, preferably native species.  For skippers, gatekeepers and meadow browns. Moths too.
Stinging nettles are favoured by the peacock butterfly, the small tortoishells and the comma.
Garlic mustard and/or Honesty for orange-tips

These don't sound like very exciting plants to have in a garden, but a swathe of long grass can look stunning - especially with a path mown though it......or even a maze - if you have room.

Garlic mustard is a fairly innocuous looking plant - it likes damp shade, so allow some to grow under the hedge or behind the shed.  You never know, you might grow to like it just as much as the brightly coloured wallflowers and sweet williams that are blooming at the same time.

Honesty is beautiful.  I thoroughly recommend it.  Not least for the silvery penny-like seed heads that shine out on dull autumn days.

A list of flowering plants to attract adult butterflies

Ageratum.   Pink or blue flowers.  Not frost hardy but great when used as summer bedding.  Grow it from seed to save money.
Allium...the flowers from anything in the onion family are super.  Chives are a super butterfly food that double up as a culinary herb.  Again, they're easy to grow from seed.
Aubrietia. A very easy to grow, perennial plant often found on walls and in rock gardens. Purple flowers in spring and early summer.
Bellflower There are lots and lots of different types of these.  The native harebell is exquisite. I've just sown seeds for a taller variety in mixed pinks, whites and blues.
Birds foot trefoil. A native species that is too often overlooked as a garden plant. Cheery yellow flowers on a low growing plant. Also great for bees

Peacock butterfly feeding on buddleja.
My colleague Debs took this picture in her garden

Buddleja. The butterfly bush. It's a must. If you don't have much room , try one of the new dwarf varieties.
Daisy.  All too often we dismiss these jolly blooms as being lawn weeds. They're lovely. Especially in containers.
Honesty. An easy to grow biennial with purple flowers.  Because it is nectar rich and is a laval food plant, honesty supports the whole life-cycle of the orange-tip butterfly.
Scabious. Bees love it, butterflies love it, I love it. Every garden and every meadow should include scabious.

Small tortoishell butterfly feeding from a scabious flower

Knapweed. Ignore the name, it's not a weed. It's an important plant for our pollinators.
Marigolds...but not the double-flowered ones. Butterflies can't fight their way through the petals to get to the nectar.
Sweet William. My granddad's favourite.
Yarrow. The native one is beautiful, then again so are it's cultivars. Ask at the garden centre for achillea. You can't go wrong with it.


Encouraging butterflies into your garden is rewarding and it's not difficult.

If you have enough room, a mini-wildflower meadow could be just what you need.  A 50cm wide strip of native flowers and grasses beside a sunny wall, a hedge or around the lawn will bring you many happy hours of butterfly watching for very little work.

Take a look at this video and you'll see how a mini- meadow was planted in my garden. I'm not in the film though....while the boys were working hard I was out shopping for doughnuts.

Meadowmat vs wild flower seeds 1 year on

Goodness! A whole year has passed since I installed 6m2 of Meadowmat at the bottom of my garden and sowed £10 worth of wildflower seeds at the other end of my plot. At the time, and for most of last summer, I rather favoured Meadowmat wild flower matting for biodiversity, for speed of establishment and for its weed suppressant properties.  So, after 12 months of growing, changing and observing which of the two plots is performing the best?

yellow rattle and red campion blooming in Meadowmat late May 2012

Biodiversity:  Meadowmat wins hands down.  The seeded plot is probably the most colourful at the moment, but that's because it is predominantly red and white campions and they are flowering their hearts out at the moment.  There is some yarrow in there, a stray dandelion (not from the seed packet..it's an imposter that escaped one of my many weeding sessions), there are a couple of plantains and a scarlet pimpernel.  On the other hand, the Meadowmat boasts red campion, ribwort plantain, sorrell, common vetch and yellow rattle in flower at the moment, with clover and oxeye daisy in bud and wild carrot, yarrow, grasses et al looking verdant and healthy and getting ready to flower later in the year.

wild flower patch grown from seed

Speed of Establishment:  1 year on, there isn't much difference in the percentage plant coverage although Meadowmat is probably thicker in the bottom and it's definitely secreting more minibeasts....spiders, flies, ladybirds etc. I think also, because they haven't been cut back or mown, the plants in the seeded area are bigger than the ones in Meadowmat.

Weed suppressing: so far I've not had to pull any weeds out of my Meadowmat patch but oh dear, last year I spent ages and ages on my knees removing thistles, groundsel, bindweed and all sorts of undesirables from the seeded area.

Overall;  Do you know, I think it was worth spending the extra money on Meadowmat compared to seeds..but that's just me.  With 2 grandchildren to entertain, 3 dogs to walk, a house to clean, a husband to cook, clean, shop and iron for - oh, and a job, I'm happy to dip into my pocket to save myself a bit of time (within limits of course), AND my Meadowmat generated 2 binbags worth of hay for Lily and Luna the guinea pigs plus a few bags of fresh greens for the tortoises. On the other hand, I do find weeding quite theraputic and the extra £50 could have bought enough petrol to keep the lawnmower and rotovator running for a year...

A brilliant book about bringing bees into the garden



 Back in January, I bought myself a copy of Jan Miller-Kelin's book, Gardening for Butterflies, Bees and other benficial insects.  My first thoughts, were that this would be a valuable resource to learn more about the way that all 34 of the plant species in Meadowmat would interact to help support pollinating insects and indeed other creatures. Here's the link to my blogpost at the time. http://meadowmat.blogspot.com/2012/01/gardening-for-butterflies-bees-and.html



I'm happy to say that the book is amazing and I could certainly recommend it to professional garden designers as well as to interested amateur gardeners like myself. 

Here's an extract from the book, see what you think

There are a few rules of thumb in attracting butterflies into the garden:-

1. Butterflies are attracted foremost by sight, so home in on large clumps of the same flower.
2. They seem to prefer purples, deep pinks and sometimes yellow and white, and do not go to deep reds at all
3. They need to feed in warm, sunny places, sheltered from the wind.
4. The individual flowers hould be single; doubles and other fancy cultivars are often ignored.
5. The nectar plants need to be well-watered in times of drought so that enough runny nectar is produced.
6. Provide different laval food plants for different species and,
7. of course, there can't be any spraying of insecticides!

I never realised that butterflies are influenced by colour schemes.  If you'd like to read more, the book is available from http://www.amazon.co.uk/.

Gardening for Butterflies, Bees and other beneficial insects

Today, I recieved in the post a copy of the book "Gardening for Butterflies, Bees and other beneficial insects" by Jan Miller-Klein. 

I've not had time to study it in detail yet, but a quick flick through has left me itching to put aside a whole afternoon to be spent in a comfy chair with a pot of tea, a log fire and a fruit cake, just reading this book and learning so much more about ways to nurture and support the flying minibeasts that are so important to our eco-system.

Jan's book takes us through the four seasons, telling us which butterflies and bees are likely to be active and which plants they need to supply them with nectar and with food for their caterpillars.  I'm not surprised to see that many of the plant species Jan describes are in Meadowmat and how many could be plug-planted into Meadowmat or planted alongside it to make even more valuable habitat. All of the  plants in the book are beautifully photographed and described with sensible advice on how best to cultivate them and what to grow alongside them.

This is a great book for anyone who enjoys (or would like to enjoy) gardening for wildlife