Any gardener can have aphids, but Red Admirals, Painted Ladies and Tiger Swallowtails insist upon certain amenities, such as sunshine and shelter from wind. To butterflies, the plants in a garden are more important than the design. They need flowers for nectar throughout the growing season. Luckily, many common annuals and perennials are top-notch nectar flowers. While native American species play an important role as host plants for hungry butterfly caterpillars, most adult butterflies have cosmopolitan tastes, supping as readily on the nectar-filled flowers of exotic plants as natives.
Butterflies seem especially attracted to gardens boasting generous patches of a given nectar flower.
Try growing three or more patches of this especially popular nectar flower, and watch the swallowtails drift from clump to clump. What's in My Garden Because I love old-fashioned cottage gardens, my garden is filled with informal groups of plants of varied heights, including many low growers spilling forth onto the garden's gravel paths. Grape hyacinths, Pulmonaria, rock cress, azaleas, lilacs, wallflowers and pinks furnish nectar in early and mid-spring. From late spring on through autumn, many butterfly plants bloom. I planted tall perennial phlox and purple coneflowers behind the Jupiter's-beard to provide color and nectar in July and August.