Monarch butterflies have been in the news lately, but for all the wrong reasons. Loss of habitat has led to a precipitous drop in the monarch population. The brilliant orange-and-black monarchs are our most widely recognized butterfly, but they need our help.
It's easy to make a welcoming spot for them -- and for all butterflies -- in your garden: Plant the flowers they love. When you plant flowers that provide for their needs, you're essentially growing your own butterflies.
"We tell everybody we talk to that there are things they can do to help monarchs -- and what's good for monarchs is good for pretty much every pollinator," says Katie-Lyn Bunney, coordinator for the Monarchs in the Classroom program at the University of Minnesota's Monarch Lab. "The first thing we recommend is to plant milkweeds."
For monarchs, the most important function of milkweeds is as a host plant for the caterpillars: Milkweed is the only food monarch caterpillars eat. Many other pollinators also favor its nutritious nectar.
Milkweeds were once common roadside plants. They were plentiful in the margins of farm fields and in the wide-open spaces of rural areas. Development has claimed the habitat of milkweeds in many areas, and modern farming practices do not leave much room for anything but cash crops. Bit by bit, it has added up to a disaster for the monarch.
Home gardeners in cities, in suburbs and in the country can take an important part in this environmental rescue project: Many milkweeds are also terrific garden plants. The orange-and-yellow blooms of butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa) are particularly striking, and it is easy to grow.
The "Bring Back the Monarch" campaign of Monarch Watch, another program dedicated to restoring butterfly habitat and reviving the monarch population, is working to restore 20 important milkweed species to their native ranges throughout the United States. The campaign, which started in 2010, is launching a "Milkweed Market" this year to help gardeners find appropriate milkweed species for their area. In the process, they're promoting healthy habitats for all pollinators.
Milkweeds are crucial, but, Bunney says, "for anyone looking to plant a pollinator or butterfly garden, you want to make sure there is nectar throughout the gardening season. If you only have some flowers in June or July, then you're not going to have butterflies all through the season." Plan ahead, and try to grow flowers to attract butterflies from the first spring bloom until the last flower succumbs to frost. Bunney recommends other native plants, too. Growing black-eyed Susans, coreopsis, coneflowers and asters -- lovely garden plants all -- is a great way to get started on a butterfly garden. Many summer annual flowers, even if they are not natives, also attract butterflies. Butterflies love zinnias as much as most gardeners do.
Good garden design benefits butterflies and other pollinators. Butterflies are attracted to plants growing in clusters, and garden designers often recommend the same technique: When you plant three or five plants of one species in a group, they have more visual impact. "Bright blotches of color are good," Bunney says.
Butterflies also need shelter. Tall shrubs, fences -- anything to break the wind -- will make life a little easier for butterflies. You could mix tall flowers, such as phlox or milkweeds, with low mounds of verbenas, for example, to create layers of nectar-rich flowers and at the same time provide some protection from wind. Planting densely also makes it easier to care for plants, and it helps shade out weeds.
You don't have to have a big garden to capture butterflies' attention. Alan Branhagen, director of horticulture at Powell Gardens, a botanic garden just outside Kansas City, worked with a local wholesale nursery this year on a design for a small and easy butterfly garden, using just three plants: butterfly milkweed, tall verbena and parsley. You could plant these together in a flowerpot, in a flower bed by the front door or at a garden gate. Parsley and other plants in the parsley family are the preferred food for swallowtail butterflies.
Branhagen designed another, more elaborate butterfly garden with purple coneflowers, catmint, Joe-pye weed, blazing star and black-eyed Susans.
It only takes a few plants to make a difference, because your friends and neighbors will be inspired by your pretty butterfly garden, Bunney says. If you join one of the monarch-support groups and post an official-looking sign designating your garden as a waystation for monarchs, "it gets people thinking about what they can do in their own garden," she says. "They will see there is a purpose to this." Before you know it, the neighbors will be making room for colorful butterfly-garden plants, too. The whole neighborhood will look the better for it, and you will be giving local and migrating butterfly populations a big boost.
SIDEBAR
KNOW YOUR MONARCHS' MIGRATION PATTERNS
The monarch butterflies we see in central and eastern North America migrate up from Mexico every spring. The journey begins when the temperature warms up enough for the first nectar plants to come into bloom. The butterflies breed as they travel north. Each monarch only lives for between two and six weeks, but, between April and August, four successive generations of monarch butterflies will have carried on the journey north. In the fall, the migration is back toward the mild climate of Mexico, where one generation overwinters.
West of the Rocky Mountains, monarchs migrate to locations along the Pacific coast. Hosts for the caterpillars and nectar plants for butterflies are crucial to both regional migrations at every stage of the monarchs' life cycle.
Monarch butterflies are "a flagship species. They are well-known and beautiful and people love them," says Katie-Lyn Bunney, who works with the Monarch Lab at the University of Minnesota. But all pollinators benefit from the effort to protect and restore monarch habitat, she says.
SOURCES
-- Monarch Joint Venture (monarchjointventure.org) is a good place to start learning more about the importance of monarch butterflies and other pollinators. The site includes links to many monarch and pollinator web sites, and it supplies butterfly garden ideas, lists of plants and places to find them.
-- Monarch Watch (monarchwatch.org) hopes to distribute thousands of milkweed seedlings this year through its Milkweed Market; if you do not know of a source for milkweed in your area, this website will help you find milkweed plants nearby.
-- Grow your own butterfly garden and have it certified as a Monarch Waystation through the Monarch Watch program. Almost 8,000 waystations have been registered. The organization also sells a waystation seed kit with tips and ideas, and a monarch waystation sign to display in your garden.
-- Monarch Lab (www.monarchlab.org) is a particularly rich site full of resources for teachers, students and schools.
(For editorial questions, please contact Clint Hooker at chooker@amuniversal.com or the Universal Uclick Editorial Department at -uueditorial@amuniversal.com)