Planting a garden that welcomes butterflies and hummingbirds offers both personal joy and a meaningful ecological contribution. These creatures are significant pollinators whose presence supports local plant diversity. Creating a habitat requires specific knowledge of their distinct needs, ensuring the garden provides energy for the adults and supports the complete life cycle of the butterflies. This focused approach transforms a simple flower bed into a vibrant, functional ecosystem.
Understanding the Specific Attraction Needs
Attracting a bird and an insect requires understanding their separate biological cues for locating food. Hummingbirds are primarily drawn by visual signals, especially shades of red, orange, and pink, as their vision excels in this spectrum. Their preferred flowers are typically tubular and hang downward, accommodating their long, thin bill and hovering feeding style. These flowers often lack a strong scent because the birds rely on sight rather than smell to find nectar.
Butterflies are also attracted to bright colors, including purple and yellow, but have different structural requirements for feeding. They require a stable platform to land on before they can uncoil their proboscis to sip nectar. Consequently, they favor flowers that are flat, clustered, or have broad landing petals. Butterfly-pollinated flowers often contain a less concentrated, more watery nectar compared to the highly concentrated nectar favored by hummingbirds.
Top Nectar Plants for Both Species
Some plants successfully bridge the needs of both hummingbirds and butterflies, often by offering a clustered arrangement of tubular blooms. These plants provide continuous, accessible nectar throughout the growing season.
Bee Balm (Monarda)
Bee Balm is an excellent perennial choice, producing shaggy, tubular flowers in shades of red, pink, and purple. The flowers are clustered in a head, providing deep, narrow tubes for hummingbirds and a sturdy landing spot for butterflies. It thrives best in full sun to partial shade with consistently moist soil.
Salvia
The vibrant, long-blooming Salvia species, particularly the red and purple varieties, are highly effective attractants. Their spiky, tubular flowers are perfectly shaped for hummingbird bills. The dense arrangement of blooms also makes them easily visible to butterflies. Most Salvias prefer full sun and well-drained soil.
Zinnias
Zinnias are popular annuals that offer a wide, flat surface for butterflies to land on. Their nectar-rich, composite flower heads also draw hummingbirds, especially scarlet varieties. They require full sun and consistent deadheading to ensure continuous blooms from early summer until the first frost.
Butterfly Bush (Buddleia)
Butterfly Bush is a well-known attractor, featuring long, cone-shaped clusters of tiny, nectar-filled flowers. While its deep flowers appeal to hummingbirds, the overall size and density of the flower spike provide excellent support for butterflies. This shrub performs best in full sun and will tolerate a variety of soil types.
Lantana
Lantana is a heat-tolerant, sun-loving plant that produces clusters of small, tubular flowers in brilliant colors like orange, red, and yellow. The flower cluster provides the necessary landing pad for butterflies. The tube shape and color attract hummingbirds.
Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea)
Purple Coneflower offers a large, flat surface for butterflies, and its prominent center cone holds nectar accessible to both pollinators. This hardy perennial is drought-tolerant once established and prefers a sunny location.
Supporting the Butterfly Life Cycle with Host Plants
Attracting butterflies requires providing resources for every stage of their metamorphosis, meaning host plants must be planted in addition to nectar sources. A host plant is the specific species on which a female butterfly lays her eggs. It serves as the sole food source for the resulting caterpillar larvae, and without it, the butterfly life cycle cannot be completed.
The Monarch butterfly is entirely dependent on plants in the Milkweed (Asclepias) genus for its survival. Female Monarchs only deposit their eggs on milkweed, and the newly hatched caterpillars feed exclusively on its leaves. Planting a native variety of milkweed is essential for supporting this species.
Other common examples include parsley, dill, and fennel, which host the Black Swallowtail butterfly. Caterpillars of the Great Spangled Fritillary rely on violets. The Eastern Tiger Swallowtail uses trees and shrubs like wild cherry and tulip poplar.
Gardeners must accept that these host plants will be visibly damaged or consumed by the feeding larvae. This defoliation is a necessary indicator that the garden is successfully supporting the next generation of butterflies, not a pest problem. Providing these host plants is a commitment to the species’ reproduction, ensuring adult butterflies continue to emerge and visit the nectar flowers.