· Plant type and color is important - Adult butterflies are attracted to red, yellow, orange, pink and purple blossoms that are flat-topped or clustered and have short flower tubes.
· Plant good nectar sources in the sun - Your key butterfly nectar source plants should receive full sun from mid-morning to mid-afternoon. Butterfly adults generally feed only in the sun. If sun is limited in your landscape, try adding butterfly nectar sources to the vegetable garden.
· Plant for continuous bloom - Butterflies need nectar throughout the adult phase of their life span. Try to plant so that when one plant stops blooming, another begins.
- Butterfly Bush – “Buddleia Low & Behold” - Silver foliage with purple scented spires – dwarf version
- Butterfly Bush – “Buddleia Miss Ruby” - Silver foliage with pink scented spires – can be trimmed back to 1 foot each spring
- Butterfly Weed/Milkweed – Asclepias - Taller plant with orange flower clusters. Main food for Monarch butterflies.
- Spirea “Snowmound” – Grown for beautiful spring foliage that then puts out generous clusters of white flowers
- Verbena “Wild Rose” & “Empress Pink” - Blooms all summer long in glowing shades of pink. Great trailing plant for containers.
- Achilla – Yarrow “Wonderful Wampee” Hardy and perennial with fernlike leaves and colorful blooms . The large, flat-topped flower clusters are perfect for cutting and drying.
- Caryopteris /Bluebeard “Blue Balloon” - Spherical bush, like a blue balloon when in full bloom. Deep blue flowers. Dark green leaves have silvery hairs beneath and emit a lavender fragrance.
- Pincushion – Scabiosa – groundcover with globelike blue flowers
- Clematis “Westerplatte” – Perennial vine with large velvety deep red flowers
- Salvia - also know as sage – Spikes of purple flowers. Deadhead after flowering for another bloom cycle.
- Lavender “munstead” – silver foliage with aromatic lavender/purple flower spikes
- Flower Carpet Groundcover Rose “Coral” –Easy care groundcover with bright, slightly ruffled, coral flowers.
- African Daisy/Osteospermum “Lemon Symphony”- Great for pop of yellow. Treated as an annual here in Utah.
- Painted Daisy “Robinson Red” - produces scarlet-red flowers which measure 2.5 inches wide and are daisy-like with a bright yellow center. Interesting ferny foliage.
- Centranthus/Jupiter’s Beard – Free-flowering clusters of red on a medium to tall clumping woody based perennial.
- Pericallis Senetti “Electric Magenta” - Large, daisylike flowers bloom from early spring until summer. Bloom count can be as high as 200 on a plant grown in a 10-inch pot
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