Butterfly Gardening in Missouri

Butterflies are beautiful to watch, their colors, the way they flit and fly, and sip nectar from the flowers you planted. That's reason enough to attract them to your garden. But the benefits of planting a butterfly garden are much broader than that. Butterfly gardens benefit other pollinators which help your vegetable garden and fruit trees. Many butterfly garden plants provide food and nesting for birds. Caterpillars provide the protein snack that birds need to feed their young and to migrate long distances.

Support the butterfly lifecycle with host plants and nectar plants

For a butterfly to compete its lifecycle, the adult butterfly eats flower nectar or the juices of fallen fruit.  The female lays her eggs on specific plants that she smells with her feet to make sure it's the right one that her caterpillars will need to eat in order to grow, molt and grow some more. Most people know that the Monarch caterpillar needs to eat Milkweed. But all butterfly species have their own particular plants that their caterpillars need to eat. These are called their host plant. You can look at the butterfly list in the link below to see what host plants each butterfly needs.

Provide a habitat network for pollinators

Planting native plants, and encouraging your neighbors to do so as well, provides a network of habitat for butterflies, birds and other pollinators. There may be a fence between you and your neighbor, but a butterfly can get nectar from your garden and hop the fence to lay eggs in your neighbor's garden. The lifecycle is supported by this pearl necklace of habitat oases.

Learn about your local wildlife and the native plants they depend on

This guide is intended as a starter kit for all gardeners who have a garden in the sun, large or small, or a patio with planters, or even something as small as a window box. The PDF in the link below is a list of plants you can choose to get a quick payoff of butterflies in your Missouri or Illinois garden. It's not a comprehensive list. I chose my favorite butterflies to attract, but gave you resources at the end to seek more information once you get inspired to go farther.

Here is a link to the PDF of my list of native midwest plants that attract and sustain butterflies of Missouri:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1J85lJOaDItYkJPLUVuVWkxb2s/view?usp=sharing

For gardeners in other areas of the country or the world, there are some resources in the right side of this blog that can get you started. Over there, look! =>