Also See How to Attract Birds the Easy Way!
We recommend this book on Butterfly Gardening:
Here are some of the butterflies visiting my South Florida garden:
Gulf Fritillary
Agraulis vanillae incarnata
Zebra Longwing: Butterfly Symbol of Florida
Heliconius charitonius
I started attracting butterflies by accident when I planted a old favorite annual: Orange Cosmos and White Cosmos. Suddenly, here came the butterflies!
Cosmos is easy to grow and produces many seeds. Just wait until the seed pod feels pointy on the end. Then it is ready for you to take the seeds. Some pods have only one seed, but most have about 4. If you have any difficulty starting your cosmos seeds, simply get a large container, fill with sterile potting soil and gently place the seeds under a small amount of the soil. Do not cover too deeply. Water when the soil becomes dry. In warm weather, place the container outdoors in FULL SUN. You will soon be rewarded with cosmos plants. They have feathery leaves. This is how you will recognize them. You do not need to use much fertilizer. Sometimes I add a fertilizer stick such as Jobe's.
Cosmos is a NECTAR plant. The butterflies love to eat the nectar of the Cosmos flowers. If you want to encourage butterflies to lay eggs in your garden and become caterpillars ("cats"), then you need to plant a couple of HOST plants, such as passion vine, fennel, maybe some dill or anise. Do NOT plant fennel near your tomatoes. A large variety of butterflies prefer the passion vine for laying their eggs. Examples are the swallowtails and many others. Be careful not to confuse the caterpillars with the pests. You want to protect the caterpillars as much as you can so they can develop into gorgeous butterflies. Some butterflies also consume the nectar of the passion flowers, such as the Zebra Longwing seen above.
Here is another very good book to help you as you create your own butterfly garden:
More Books about Creating a Butterfly Garden
I have Cardinal Climber growing in a large container outdoors and on a fence. Ipomea x multifida
Cardinal Climber (above) looks similar to Cypress Vine (Ipomea quamoclit), seen below: but if you look closely, the leaves are different.
Cardinal Climber and Cypress Vine are easy to grow. Do not let the soil dry out more than one day. The seed heads are like little ovals. When they turn brown, you can collect the seeds inside. Butterflies and hummingbirds love Cardinal Climber and Cypress Vine.
Cypress Vine is a nectar plant for the Palamedes Swallowtail.
Do not be concerned when you see the caterpillars eating the leaves off your plants. They need to eat the leaves of the host plants in order to grow. Be happy when you see caterpillars!
And: Dutchman's Pipe Vine Growing Hints
Swallowtail Butterfly Caterpillar: It ate the leaves off the passion vine!
Need to identify a caterpillar? Here is a wonderful index with photos!
Trying to identify a butterfly? Here are gorgeous photos with IDs
Passion Vine: Passiflora
Passion vine (passiflora) grows at astounding rates here in South Florida and can completely cover a huge tree in less than one year's time. This happened to me. I was working full-time and somehow lost track of the vines. When I looked, I could NOT SEE THE TREE, only the passion vines and flowers. Bear in mind, please, that the passion vines are very strong growers, so you will need to prune the vines from time to time or your house may disappear under the vines and huge flowers. HA HA, a very small joke, but not too far off the point...
See More Butterfly HousesRemember, DO NOT USE PESTICIDES in your garden. If you spot aphids or other pests, use a spray of water into which you have added a bit of dish detergent. On in-between dry days, I sprinkle a pinch of a mixture of cornmeal and cayenne pepper on all my plants, on their leaves and around the base of the plants. EXCEPT the butterfly nectar and host plants.
The cornmeal kills worms such as cutworms, and the cayenne pepper deters ants, aphids and more, because the foliage no longer tastes good, it tastes like SALSA and they don't like it!
I am planning now to add more nectar plants such as pentas, phlox, petunias. I have a ton of morning glories of all colors; butterflies love them. I have pink, white and lavender morning glories growing on a fence.
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