Gardening for Butterflies: How You Can Attract and Protect Beautiful, Beneficial Insects

by The Xerces Society

Overview

“No matter the size or shape of your growing area, this will guide you through creating a butterfly-friendly space.” —Mother Earth News

Welcome the world’s most exquisite visitors to your garden! Gardening for Butterflies, by the experts at the Xerces Society, introduces you to a variety of butterflies who need our help, and shows you how to design a habitat where they will thrive. This optimistic call to arms is packed with everything you need to create a beautiful, pollinator-friendly garden. You will learn why butterflies matter, why they are in danger, and what simple steps we can take to make a difference. You'll also learn how to choose the right plants and how to create a garden that flutters and flourishes with life.

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781604695984
Publisher:	Timber Press, Incorporated
Publication date:	03/23/2016
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	8.05(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.57(d)

About the Author

The Xerces Society is a nonprofit organization based in Portland, Oregon, that protects wildlife through the conservation of invertebrates and their habitat. Established in 1971, the Society is at the forefront of invertebrate protection worldwide, harnessing the knowledge of scientists and the enthusiasm of citizens to implement conservation programs. They are the authors of 100 Plants to Feed the Bees, Farming with Native Beneficial Insects, and Attracting Native Pollinators.   

Read an Excerpt

Preface: Butterfly Gardeners Can Change the World

A couple of us writing this book grew up during the last gasp of the American muscle car. We have teenage memories of rocketing in Plymouth Barracudas and Chevy Novas down old country roads in the Midwest and the Great Plains. Even a short drive back then resulted in hundreds of dead bugs splattered across the grille, so we were always washing those cars. Returning to our teenage haunts today with a few gray hairs, vastly more fuel-efficient cars, and the lens of professional conservationists, we are awestruck by the lack of bugs. Drive across the entire state of North Dakota, Nebraska, or Iowa now, and your car will be practically spotless when you get to the other side. Animals, including insects, are disappearing.

A global assessment of wildlife populations in 2014 released by the World Wide Fund for Nature and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) found that the sheer number vertebrates on earth had declined by more than 50 percent since 1970. While the ZSL report did not assess insect populations, irrefutable evidence of their decline and clear examples of insect extinctions can be found. Many of the rare insects have always been rare, but now once-common insects are becoming rare as well. The most striking example of this is the iconic monarch butterfly, whose population has declined by 80 percent across North America since monitoring efforts began in the mid-1990s.

Loss and degradation of habitat is driving this disappearing act. Urban landscapes divide up, pave over, and fragment formerly green spaces. Agriculture favors fewer types of crops, leaves fewer edges unplowed and untrampled, and tolerates ever fewer “pests.” The wild places that remain bear the indignities of invasive species, climate uncertainties, and hardscrabble resource extraction such as mining and logging. The net result is that 7 billion humans have finally created a fully human-dominated world.

Despite the biodiversity crisis unfolding in real time all around us, we believe that butterflies and other animals can have a secure future. However, such a future will require reconciliation between the human environment and a more natural one. Policies that could accelerate such a reconciliation are desperately needed. At the same time, as individuals we cannot simply stand by and do nothing while we wait for those policies. At least in the case of butterflies, every one of us who gardens has the potential to change the world.

This book is designed to be a blueprint for that change. Whether you live in California’s Central Valley, upstate New York, or the panhandle of Texas, you can play a critical role right now in saving the earth’s butterflies. You don’t need a large space. A small yard with just a few native plants can attract and sustain dozens of butterfly species. And beyond aiding butterflies, your yard can become a wildlife refuge for all of the creatures that pollinate crops and wildflowers in your region. Your efforts will support countless other creatures as well, from lady beetles to songbirds. The insect populations that grow and thrive in native grasses and forbs around your patio will increase in number and disperse, and their descendants will ultimately go on to feed fish and bears and bats. If you manage larger landscapes, the gardening concepts described in this book can easily be scaled up to provide habitat on roadsides or in parks and natural areas.

Finally, when you share what you do, your garden can become a platform for science education, connecting kids to the amazing life cycle of butterflies, from caterpillars and their host plants to the incredible process of metamorphosis, to the colorful adults drinking nectar from equally colorful flowers; this exposure can build a new generation of conservationists. Similarly, by sharing your efforts with neighbors, other gardeners, community groups, and local conservation agencies, you are giving those people a living template to inspire their own efforts. You are changing expectations about what our human-dominated landscapes should look like; you are exposing gigantic manicured lawns and insecticides as embarrassingly uncool; you are creating a world where it is no longer weird to be the person with the overgrown, wildflower-filled yard and instead making it weird to not be that person.

When you create this world, you will bring back the butterflies, the other bugs, and ultimately all of the animals that have become so absent from our lives. Who would have thought that some simple landscaping could do all of that?

Table of Contents

Foreword Robert Michael Pyle 6

Preface: Butterfly gardeners can change the world 8

Why butterflies matter-and why they are in trouble 13

Knowing butterflies and what they need 37

Designing your butterfly garden 69

Butterfly garden plants of North America 105

Plant selection, installation, and maintenance 193

Gardening for moths 217

Helping butterflies beyond the garden fence 241

Observing and enjoying butterflies 255

Metric conversions 268

Additional resources 269

Suggested reading 272

Acknowledgments 275

Photography credits 276

Index 277

Interviews

Portland, Oregon

Editorial Reviews

Celebrate Earth Day by taking cues from Gardening for Butterflies, which suggests the best blooms for attracting spring's prettiest winged creatures.” —Martha Stewart Living

“There are chapters on designing a butterfly garden, creating shelter, butterfly plants, installation and maintenance, observing and conserving, even tagging butterflies to help track migration. But the best part of this book might be the photographs of these incredible creatures.” —Country Gardens 

“Gardeners interested particularly in the ecological issues of pollinator conservation will want this book, which provides them with the rationale and tools for supporting and promoting pollinators.” —Library Journal

“An introduction to some of the most endangered butterflies and a guide to creating a garden that can protect and nurture them.” —Gardens Illustrated

“Outstanding. . . . Perhaps the most appealing aspect of butterfly gardening is that you can really make a difference for butterflies and other pollinators in your backyard. This Xerces Society book is a great guide to get you started or to enhance your existing efforts.” —Wildlife Activist

“This book, from a leading pollinator conservation organization, tells why we should care about helping butterflies and then names the plants and techniques that are most helpful to bringing them into your yard.” —Patriot News

“Even beyond the plant recommendations, the ideas on providing places for butterflies to pupate, take shelter and overwinter are helpful in re-imagining my garden as a place where butterflies might like to live, rather than just visit for a snack.” —North Coast Journal

“Provides home gardeners with everything they need to create a beautiful, beneficial, butterfly-filled garden. The book introduces readers to a variety of butterflies that need help and provides suggestions for native plants to attract them, habitat designs to help them thrive, and garden practices to accommodate all their stages of life, no matter the size of your garden space.” —Houston Lifestyles and Homes

“Whether you have a garden or just a love of butterflies, Gardening for Butterflies will give you the tools you need to become a butterfly steward. Pick up a copy and buy one for a friend, too.” —EcoBeneficial

“Save the butterflies, save the world is the motto of this book dedicated to an insect so flutteringly lovely that just a glimpse of one brings joy to the heart of a gardener. But how often do we think about planting for caterpillars as well as nectar? I’ve already copied the list of host and nectar plants for our climate to keep in the front of my gardening notebook.” —Pacific NW Magazine

“Growing a butterfly garden isn't a novel idea—but Gardening for Butterflies, a new book by the Xerces Society, elevates the concept from whimsical to essential. . . . No matter the size or shape of your growing area, this new title will guide you through creating a butterfly-friendly space.” —Mother Earth News

“You—a large, warm-blooded creature incapable of flight—actually have something very important in common with the butterfly: You both adore flowers. In clear prose and lovely photographs, a new book—Gardening for Butterflies: How You Can Attract and Protect Beautiful, Beneficial Insects—tells how to make the most of that shared obsession.” —Columbus Dispatch

From the Publisher