Butterfly garden

How to attract butterflies

Provide the butterflies with warmth (a sunny spot), shelter (shrubs and trees) and nectar and butterflies will start to use your garden to feed and maybe even breed.

Ten plants to try

1. Aubretia, Aubrieta 'Doctor Mules'; a carpet-forming plant that produces rich violet or blue flowers in May and June.
2. Sweet rocket, Hesperis matronalis; deliciously scented plant that produces white, violet or purple flowers from May to August.
3. Red valerian, Centranthus ruber; a cottage garden plant that produces clusters of red flowers from mid-summer through to autumn. Great for dry soil.
4. Lavender, Lavandula; a familiar garden favourite, producing white, pink, blue or purple aromatic flowers during the summer months. Flowers and foliage are used for making pot-pourri.
5. Honesty, Lunaria annua; a tall plant with heart-shaped leaves and sweet-smelling pink or violet-purple flowers from April to June.
6. Teasel, Dipsacus fullonum; a plant that produces spiny flower-heads of pinkish purple from mid- to late summer.
7. Small scabious, Scabiosa 'Butterfly Blue'; a long-flowering plant that produces lavender-blue flowers from late spring well into autumn.
8. Butterfly bush, Buddleja davidii; this plant produces cone-shaped clusters of tiny flowers in either purple, white, pink, or red. Irresistible to butterflies!
9. Golden rod, Solidago 'Goldenmosa'; a clump-forming border plant that produces feathery, golden flower-heads in late summer and early autumn.
10. Ivy, Hedera helix; an evergreen climbing vine that will provide winter nectar for the few remaining butterflies in your garden.