10 Tips to Attract BUTTERFLIES & MOTHS to Your Garden

Hey folks, so we've done videos in the recent past about how to attract wildlife to your landscape, ways to attract specialist native bees to your garden, pollinator garden plants, and also host plants for butterflies and moths. But let's talk in general about how to garden specifically for our butterflies and moths. Now to give you a those who study them fondly call them leps, which means scaly wing. And if you ever zoomed in on the wing of a butterfly or moth, then you realize that they do have these powdery scales on their wings and their body. I mean, even if you've touched them, you've probably gotten that onto your fingertips. But let's discuss what differentiates butterflies and moths for the gray area. Now you may be able to consider all butterflies as moths, since moths were the first to emerge evolutionarily speaking. Butterflies then emerged from those moths. Butterflies are also primarily diurnal, which means that they're flying during the day, so we tend to notice them a bit more. Moths, although this is not always true, they're more considered nocturnal. Moths are typically more furry looking, which is due to all the scales on their body. And then butterflies always to me feel a little bit more naked. Moths also tend to be a little meatier. They're a little stockier. They kind of look like flying furry sausages. And then their antennae are either straight or they have a really feathery appearance compared to a butterfly's antennae, which are thinner and they're either more clubbed or knobbed. Now due to the quote-unquote fur of the moths, which are again the scales, they tend to be better pollinators. Whereas butterflies, for as much as they're touted pollinators, and when you go to the store and you see pollinator plants, you see a cute little butterfly, they are really better at nectaring and are only at best modest pollinators. Now something like a skipper, which is a smaller but a bit more scalier butterfly, kind of almost looks like the cross between a butterfly and a moth, they probably have better pollination potential because of the scales on their body and on their wings. You might not know this, but like moths are somewhere between nine and ten times more plentiful species-wise. But we don't usually know that because butterflies, we tend to know them more because they're out during the day and we're up during the day and they're more noticeable for that fact. But moths in general are more plentiful at night, so unless you're out there with like a nightlight or a headlamp, then you won't be able to notice them as much. But still, even if you don't notice them in your garden, it's really a delight to have moths and butterflies in your garden, which is one reason why you may want to attract them. And even if you are not witnessing all of them in the garden, it's a good feeling knowing that you are providing a space for more diverse life. Simply like another reason is that caterpillars, particularly moth caterpillars, they provide much needed food for 96% of our songbirds, particularly to raise their young in the spring and summer months. And you know, I've got a lot of garden tours and there are like so many gardens that I've visited where they actually feel quite sterile. And as much as the plants are alive in their gardens, they don't really pull the weight in supporting other life, including butterflies and moths. So gardening for wildlife, including caterpillars and butterflies and moths that they eventually metamorphosize into, is something that I would encourage you to consider. So without further ado, let's focus on what we can do to attract and support butterflies and moths in our gardens and landscapes. First and foremost is sunlight. And butterflies and moths are cold-blooded creatures, so they need that sunlight to get going. And you'll often notice that they come out during the sunniest days in the garden or maybe in the afternoons. And you won't often see them around now, which is like the morning hours, which is when I'm filming, because it's still too chilly. And on top of that, the plants that they like are generally sun-loving plants. So the plants that their caterpillars will eat or that they'll pollinate are often in the sun. So if you're in a shady area, chances are you're going to cut down on your options of seeing more butterflies and moths in your gardens. Number two is host plants. To grow butterflies and moths, we need to provide food for their caterpillars. And if you've been watching these videos, we've done three of them so far, focusing on examples of horticulturally valuable plants that also do double duty as pollinator plants, plants that are typically considered weedy that could be host plants for butterflies and moths, and then 30 of our trees and shrubs that also act as host food for caterpillars. So I'll link to each of those videos so that you could go more in depth if you hadn't seen those or if you want a refresher. So today I'm going to be planting this pleurisy root. This is also called butterfly weed and this is in the genus Asclepias. This is Asclepias tuberosa. You may recall that this is related to our common milkweed and this gets a nice bright orange flower. So it's been on my mind to actually plant these in the gazebo. I've kind of situated ourselves with like more orange and blue flowers. But what's important about this plant is that it's also a monarch butterfly. I think I'll plant half of them in here and then half of them in another garden. I like to do that, kind of spread it around. And this is also a great medicinal plant. It's known as pleurisy root as I had mentioned earlier. And of course you have to use the root. And so I figured let's plant it in here. Now these are good for, this is a pretty rich potting medium that we're using here. We're using Espoma's raised bed mix and we have some land and sea compost, mushroom compost that we've spread throughout here. And you can see the plants are really happy. I mean look at this green bean. Oh my gosh look at that. I know we need to be harvesting these. Holy crap. Feed a family. But these don't need really all this lovely soil mix. I mean it's not going to hate it but you could grow these in pretty dry areas. So I'm going to plant these as part of the medicinal but also as that homage to our monarch butterflies. I have seen some adult monarch butterflies coming around but it's important to know what plants of yours are host plants for caterpillars. And obviously monarchs have been one of those butterflies that have been on people's minds when we think about planting host plants. This area back here is a lot drier. It gets south facing light so I think these will probably really excel back in this area. And then that will give a nice host plant for some of our monarch butterflies back here as well. Which strangely as I was walking over here, maybe not so strangely, I saw one on our flower in the pollinator garden. Just a reminder for those tuning into this video, I'm focusing on caterpillars in my region of the Finger Lakes of New York. And some of these are a bit more cosmopolitan of course especially on the east coast. But I would encourage you to do your own research on your plants in your region so that you could find what your native caterpillars actually eat. Now one thing I will say is that as gardeners in general we're not accustomed to insects eating our plants. In fact like many of us had been trained to kill or spray or keep caterpillars at bay. But typically our native caterpillars don't decimate our plants. So coming to terms or understanding that a little insect tune leave or leaves are actually quite normal and understanding that there's really in my book no room ecologically for pristine perfect no leaf touched kind of gardens. Now planting more than one host plant or plants in a group is actually more ideal. So it gives the adult butterflies and moths something substantial to oviposite on. Planting in groups is also pretty good because butterflies and moths they can't see far so they need to actually see a bit nearer. We got through host plants and number three related to that would be pollinator or nectaring plants. So let's just kind of focus on the rest of the foodstuffs because butterflies and moths go through complete metamorphosis. So they have the eggs, they have their caterpillar, then they pupate and they either go into either a cocoon or chrysalis and then they become the adult butterfly or moth. So having the pollinator or nectaring plants is basically having blooming plants that provide both the nectar and the pollen sources for the adult butterfly or moth. But as I had mentioned for butterflies it's primarily nectar sources and most of these butterflies and moths like to have a landing pad to get at the nectar. So you'll often see flat-topped flowers, umbels, they're preferred but not always because I have a number of vertical inflorescences like the liatris which I have talked about heavily on this channel because it's one of my favorite plants in the garden especially the pollinator garden and that is heavily visited by butterflies. But also say like a lot of the plants in the Asteraceae family which the daisy family they are great attractors and Asteraceae is also a great family of plants for our native bees as well so that's kind of like a two-for-one deal. As I shared with the the same with the host plants planting in clumps or in larger drifts that serves as a better beacon because they are nearsighted and cannot see too far so they want to kind of flit around the garden and see a big clump of that so that they could go from plant to plant and nectar or pollinate. Also planting flowers that will bloom throughout the season is a given. Some of the butterflies actually emerge like our morning cloak emerge really early and then you have some butterflies that will be on their migratory path like later in the season. So go with large drifts, large clumps, plants that bloom over the course of many different seasons let's say from like April through November and then also go with single flowers and not the fancy double flowers because those flowers the double flowers have been so overly bred that they don't provide any nectar or pollen sources any longer. So those petals those what used to be the pollen centers are actually now petals and so it doesn't provide any value for insects. Now I think one thing that we can't overlook is our moths because most of them not all like we just had our hummingbird moth and our snowberry clearwing they often come out during the day and they're mistaken as like hummingbirds but most of those moths will want white flowers or light flowers that are reflected in the moonlight. So that's something to consider and oftentimes flowers that have a like a penstemon or something that have a long tube so they could stick their proboscis which is their little feeding mouth part into that plant but all sorts of white plants at night and again getting a headlamp or night light at night and seeing what moths you might be able to identify is a good way to actually experience moths. All right next one on the list is the water source. Providing something called puddling stones or a really shallow area a shallow muddy area for our moths is and butterflies is something that they'll look towards and basically these are areas that are shallow but have water that the butterfly or moth can't drown in because they can't really land on water. So I have found that having providing like shallow seashells or I have this one shallow it was actually for a pestle and mortar and I just brought it outside and I was like oh this is a cool little area for them to like a little water hole in. That's what they'll use and I've actually seen butterflies and moths and also wasps and bees and other insects on that area. So bird baths basically won't cut it unless you actually build it up so that you have stones in that bird bath so again something there's something that they could actually land on and not drown on. Related to that is minerals and amino acids slash proteins and you'll often see butterflies flocking to our ditches or you might see them on animal dung or carcasses and other kind of gross areas maybe areas like in your compost pile. That's where there are more excessive amino acids and minerals because remember a lot of these butterflies are just nectaring and they're not getting any protein sources and male butterflies in particular need those minerals in order to produce the pheromones they use to attract their mates and then that is actually passed on through their eggs and then through the caterpillars as well. One thing I would say is fermenting fruit and I shared this but I'll also notice butterflies on my compost pile and that's particularly when I throw out like maybe a rotting fruit so if you have like a fermenting banana or an apple then you'll often attract butterflies and probably like other creatures as well. I mean I see a lot of our yellow jackets and hornets that are attracted to that. Next one on the list is soft landings and some caterpillars will hang from a leaf or wrap themselves in a leaf but others will drop to the duff layer which is to say the leaves and the plants that are below trees or in the garden. So leaving leaves and duff around the garden and specifically below trees or trees that would serve as host plants especially below the crown of a tree then that's really important and I actually did a whole video on a soft landing and you could see one of the soft landings that we planted under one of our locust trees here and we'll link to that video and you could say oh well that looks maybe a little bit weedy but that's particularly what the butterflies and moths as are in their chrysalis or cocoon that's what they want to be able to drop down into and overwinter in. Well butterflies and moths are not always flitting around so I would say that the next one on the list to provide is places to rest. Butterflies and moths don't really rest or sleep in the same way that we do but they enter into a resting state called quiescence. So darker spaces that are quiet maybe under tree bark, bushes, a pile of tree limbs those are what they're looking for to protect themselves and we have a lot of shag bark hickory trees around here and that's where the bark on the adult trees they start to curl up and you will often see moths and butterflies under there. In the pollinator garden in particular we also have butterfly homes and they're basically like these thin vertical slots where they could go into and we put them quite visibly around our pollinator garden. Now I've never peeked inside and saw a butterfly in there but my hope is that just if we provide something like that it's at least available to them to use. Next thing on the list is just keeping your lights off as much as possible and this is more for our moths because moths as we all know get attracted to light and there are different theories out there as to why that is but having less light pollution basically give our moths more safety and not put them into harm's way. I know that's a little bit harder to do in suburban and city areas but if you're in the country you know using choosing to put lights on that are maybe motion detected or shutting your lights off generally at night is probably good ecological hygiene. And I think the last one on the list is a no-brainer but really just keeping the garden chemical free and this goes without saying but anything like pesticides, insecticides, herbicides whether they are synthetic organic or otherwise that will keep your garden healthy and you will find that there will be plenty more caterpillars and other insects in the process. So I would say those are 10 of my strategies to attract a good healthy population of butterflies and moths as well as caterpillars in your garden and just come to terms with the fact that your garden is maybe not just for your own beauty but also you're sharing that garden with other life and you're looking to create a more diverse habitat in your garden and landscape. All right thank you so much and I will see you in the next video. Bye! We'll be sharing how the gardens and wildscaped areas mature as the seasons progress so if you enjoy videos like this be sure to like subscribe and hit the notifications button to help us grow and share these videos to more folks. In the meantime we'll be cracking away at more of the gardens and renovations here at Flock. We'll see you in the next video.