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Northern Virginia Landscapes: Butterfly Garden

Welcome New Residents to Your Yard by Creating a Butterfly Garden

Did you know that Northern Virginia is home to more than 100 species of butterflies? Attract these beauties to your yard by building a vibrant butterfly garden to serve as both a home for butterflies and an eye-pleasing addition to your landscape.

When choosing a site for your butterfly garden, look for a section of your yard that can offer both shade and sun, as well as protection from the wind. Butterflies are cold-blooded, and thus need spots to perch and sun themselves, so include a flat rock or bare spot in your garden set-up. Butterflies are unable to drink directly from open water, so create puddles of moist sand or mud in your garden.

Choose both nectar plants and larval host plants to encourage butterflies to feed, lay their eggs, and multiply in your garden. Nectar plants provide adult butterflies with food, while larval host plants feed caterpillars. Butterflies are attracted to fragrant, bright flowers and plants that provide a landing platform. Optimal butterfly garden plants have many tiny purple, white, or blue flowers together in one head, allowing butterflies to take in plenty of nectar at once. Native Northern Virginia nectar flowers include butterfly bush, goldenrods, asters, and blazing star, while native larval host plants include violets, pansies, clovers, and native grasses.

Plant as many butterfly-attracting plants as you can in order to attract the most butterfly attention. Plant taller plants in the back, mid-sized in the middle, and short ones in the front to accommodate both low-feeding and high-feeding butterflies. You should see the most butterfly activity on warm, sunny days between April and October. For more gardening tricks and tips for your Northern Virginia home, contact Second Nature, Inc., providing complete landscaping design and construction services to the Northern Virginia and Washington DC region.