Closeup of black and orange butterfly on purple blooms

How to Attract Butterflies to the Garden

susan martin | june 6, 2025

Seeing the first butterfly of the season is always a joy, but by understanding what they need to thrive and reproduce, you can ensure they will stick around your garden all season. As they are spending the summer sipping nectar from your flowers, they’ll also be playing an important role in pollination both in your garden and the surrounding environment. Let’s take a closer look at these fascinating and beautiful pollinators.

Newly eclosed monarch butterfly on tropical milkweed. Photo by Susan Martin.

Monarch caterpillar feeding on milkweed. Photo by Susan Martin.

A Butterfly's Life Cycle

In order to encourage butterflies to make your garden their home, it’s important to understand the basics of their life cycle. Butterflies begin as tiny eggs which hatch into caterpillars. When the caterpillar is mature, it goes through a transformation by forming a protective chrysalis around its body in which it eventually completes the process of becoming a butterfly. Shortly after female butterflies hatch, they are mature enough to begin laying eggs, and the life cycle begins anew.

In the fall, some butterflies like monarchs and painted ladies migrate south to overwinter in warmer climates. However, not all butterflies overwinter the same way. Depending on the species and location, they may overwinter as eggs, in a chrysalis, as a caterpillar, or as a mature butterfly.

Host Plants for Butterflies

Butterflies need both host plants and nectar sources throughout their life cycle. Most will only lay their eggs on a few very specific plants including milkweed, lupines, false indigo, lilacs and native grasses like switch grass.

Monarch butterflies in particular have developed a very unique survival strategy. They lay their eggs on host milkweed plants which contain an irritating sap in their leaves and stems. When the caterpillars feed on the foliage, they ingest the sap which makes them taste awful to potential predators. That’s pretty smart!

Monarch Caterpillar on Asclepias tuberosa

‘Serendipity’ ornamental onion with pollinating bee and butterfly. Photo by Proven Winners.

Butterflies as Pollinators

While it’s true that butterflies don’t have specialized body parts to collect and distribute pollen like bees do, they are still efficient pollinators. Butterflies are more interested in the nectar that flowers produce rather than their pollen. When they land on a bloom, they extend their long proboscis down into it to drink. In doing so, they collect pollen grains on their legs and feet which are then distributed to the subsequent flowers they visit.

In some ways, butterflies are actually more efficient pollinators than bees. While bees are usually mainly interested in the pollen at the center of a flower, butterflies will often feed from the edges of a cluster of blooms like that of tropical milkweed or verbena. For this reason, it’s thought that they can pollinate 50% more of the flowers on a plant by visiting parts that bees don’t typically feed from.

Butterflies aren’t responsible for pollinating major agricultural crops like bees. However, they are vital for pollinating the wildflowers and native plants that often surround crop land. It’s thought that their role in doing so is crucial for maintaining healthy, diverse ecosystems.

What Butterflies See and Smell

Compound eyes give butterflies unique vision. They can see up, down, forward, backward and to the sides all at once. If you’ve ever tried to get close enough to a butterfly to snap a quick photo and it quickly flew away, now you know how it saw you coming!

Butterflies are attracted to vivid colors – especially red, pink, purple, yellow and orange which are easy to spot during the day. This is in contrast to lighter colored flowers that tend to attract more moths which usually feed at night when those flowers are easier to spot.

Thanks to tiny chemoreceptors dotted all over their bodies, butterflies can “smell” which plants contain the nectar they seek to feed on. They also help female butterflies identify appropriate host plants on which to lay their eggs.

Plants with light, fresh scents like lavender and ornamental herbs like bee balm and anise hyssop are attractive to butterflies. Many male butterflies also produce scents which mimic these types of flowers in order to attract a mate. It makes you wonder which scent evolved first – that of the flowers or the male bees?

Silver-spotted skipper on English lavender. Photo by Susan Martin.

Eastern tiger swallowtails puddling in wet sand.

Create a Butterfly Puddle

In addition to nectar, butterflies need essential minerals and salts to function and reproduce. They find them in wet organic materials like mud, clay and sand. It is important to either leave some parts of your garden uncovered with mulch or to craft a special spot where there is exposed, wet soil they can use to pick up these necessary minerals. They’ll also drink from the puddle, but be sure the water is very shallow so they do not drown.

Plant These Flowers for Butterflies

Finally, let’s explore some key plants you’ll need for your butterfly garden. These creatures won’t care if they are annuals, perennials, trees or shrubs – if they have the right kind of vibrantly colored flowers, the butterflies will surely show up for lunch. Plants with broad, flat flowers or clusters of blooms, or that have substantial petals on which to perch are sure to be the most popular items on the menu. Don’t forget to include host plants in your garden, too, so butterflies can complete their entire life cycle without ever leaving your yard.

Bloomerang Ballet® reblooming lilac Photo by Proven Winners.

Host Plants for Butterflies

Butterflies are very specific about which plants they will use as host plants, so you’ll notice this list is much shorter than the nectar plants list below. If you are looking to attract a particular type of butterfly, do your research first to find out which plants they will use as hosts. Monarchs, for example, will only lay their eggs on milkweed. More generally, some common host plants for butterflies include:

Nectar Plants for Butterflies

Look for plants with broad, flat flowers or clusters of flowers and those with a large “lip” for perching. Choose some that bloom in each season to provide a continual food source. We offer hundreds of nectar-producing plants that butterflies love. See them all here. In addition to the flowering host plants listed above, our best nectar plants for butterflies include: