Important caterpillar food plants
The key to creating the perfect butterfly garden is to provide for their young. You’ll encourage butterflies to breed and come to your garden if there’s somewhere they can lay their eggs, on plants that the caterpillars will munch on greedily before adulthood beckons. Here’s a selection of vital food plants.
Nettles
The number one food plant, attracting at least five types of butterfly – commas, painted ladies, red admirals, peacocks and small tortoiseshells. Simply don’t be too tidy! Leave a small patch of nettles in your wildlife corner to help these butterflies out.
Bird’s foot trefoil
These pretty, slipper-like wildflowers, also known as eggs and bacon, are prevalent in grassy areas such as lawns and wildflower meadows. Common blues and green hairstreaks love it. Sow seeds now so there’s a better chance you’ll see flowers next year.
Nasturtiums
Easy-grow nasturtiums pop up quickly and can be sown anywhere. They’re not fussy and only need enough water and no feeding. Sow lots around the garden so there’s enough for everyone to enjoy. Large, small and green-veined whites simply love them.
Grasses
Leave somewhere free for wild grasses to colonise, as certain types attract skippers, meadow browns, gatekeepers and speckled woods, to name but a few. Or try Agrostis nebulosa (cloud grass), a frothy border grass to team with late-season perennials.
Ivy
Ivy is such a valuable plant for lots of insects, but red admirals and holly blue butterflies rely on it in late summer and autumn for their larvae to eat the flower buds, leaves and berries. Let some wild patches of ivy grow – after all, it does look beautiful if you don’t mind it spreading a little.
Cuckoo flower
Orange-tip butterflies love to feed on Cardamine pratensis, which flowers daintily in spring. It loves moist soil, so sow seeds now ready for next year in a damp spot by a pond or wet meadow area. It looks lovely sown in a small drift in a mini bog garden.
It’s important to make nectar available for butterflies through much of the year. It’s really easy to start with an abundance of summer blooms available to plant now, or as seeds to sow. But as we move into next month, keep the food on tap with easy plants that pack in the colour, too, such as asters and sedums. Keep in mind that emerging butterflies will need as much food as they can get from February after their long sleep, so plan for some early flowers. Start planting bulbs immediately, sow wildflower seeds now and order perennials to plant now and into autumn.
Autumn
Help your bu erflies feed up for the winter with these late-flowering lovelies: Michaelmas daisies (asters), sedums, solidago, hyssop, ivy, purple loosestrife,
Phlox paniculata and hemp agrimony ( Eupatorium cannabinum).
Summer
Make your garden a bright, bu erfly-filled paradise now with these fab flowers: sedums, single-flowered dahlias, calendula, valerian, sea holly, sunflowers, cirsium, Verbena bonariensis, buddleja and honeysuckle.
Spring
Provide vital food for emerging bu erflies with these early bloomers: aubrieta, cuckoo flowers, forget-me-nots, cherries, primroses, sweet Williams, honesty, muscari, apple blossom and rosemary.