- 2024 Native Plant Sale
- >
- Native Garden Kits
- >
- Butterfly Garden Kit
Butterfly Garden Kit
This kit contains as many host plants for as many UP butterflies as we could identify and include. It also contains a colorful variety of nectar plants that will signal the presence of butterfly-friendly habitat to adults and other pollinators. This kit shows love for all the butterflies - even the little ones like Azures and Skippers.
The Butterfly Garden Kit is designed for average garden soil and full to part sun. It will contain one shrub seedling (Cinquefoil or New Jersey Tea) and 2 to 5 of each of the other species. A typical kit would contain the following mix of plants, but one way we keep the per plant costs low on garden kits is by reserving the right to substitute plants based on our current inventory. Your kit is likely to differ from the list below in exact species, however, the plants included will meet the stated goals of the kit, in this case, host plants or nectar plants needed by butterflies*. If you need specific plants for your garden goals, you can supplement your garden kit with quarts:
- Sunflower, Tall or Paleleaf - for Checkerspots
- Golden Alexander - for Black Swallowtails
- Pussytoes, Prairie Sage, or Pearly Everlasting - Painted and American Ladies, and nectar plant for Azures
- Northern Heart Leaf or other Aster - for Crescents and Checkerspots
- Flat-top Aster - Harris’s Checkerspot
- Swamp Milkweed - for Monarchs
- Blazingstar, Northern, Prairie, or Rough - favorite nectar plant
- Little Bluestem or other native grass - for Skippers, Ringlets, Dashes, Wood-Nymphs, and many others
- Turtlehead - for Checkerspots
- Shrubby Cinquefoil or New Jersey Tea - for Dorcas Copper or Azures & chrysalis support
- Butterfly Milkweed - for Monarchs
- Violets - for Fritillaries
- Lupine - for Gray Hairstreak & Blues
- Sedge, Pennsylvania or other sun-tolerant sedge - for Crescents, Skippers, Dashes, and Browns
All of these plants are potentially the host plant for Harvester butterflies. Harvester caterpillars do not eat plants, they eat wooly aphids! Keep in mind that aphids provide food for many creatures while rarely killing their host plant. If possible, let them live on your plants and see what shows up. It might be an insectivorous Harvester butterfly caterpillar.