Hi Elodie, I'm sorry to bother you but I figured you might be able to help! I've recently come into possession of a garden in southern England, and would like to plant things to attract butterflies. Do you have any suggestions, please?
That's a lovely thing, congratulations on your garden! I'm so pleased for you.
And what a timely question! Here in the UK, the yearly Big Butterfly Count is about to start. It's a great citizen science project that's super easy to take part in - especially this year, when the UK is in a state of butterfly emergency! You just download an app, stay still in one place for 15 minutes (quite a nice thing to do) and record how many butterflies you see. "no butterflies" is a perfectly good answer, since the data is compiled against previous years!
It's brilliant that you started by naming where you are. Thank you so much for that! It's super common in plantcraft circles for everyone to assume the same priorities and geography, meaning that that most posts about ecological gardening - questions, answers and discourse - are just slop. repetitive slop. slop that causes you to learn less about plants. Let us proceed behind the cut in an attitude of NO SLOP.
There are a lot of angles to approach the question, and an entire universe to discover in each answer. For example, if you just want to plonk down a plant and get INSTANT BUTTERFLIES to watch, then you might want butterfly bush (Buddleja davidii.) This strong-smelling plant grows VERY quickly, requires little care (although it requires reasonable maintenance) has a huge amount of nectar, and summons butterflies from all over for you to watch.
However, it's a species that isn't native to the UK. It behaves invasively - buddleja will try to grow in roof tiles; carparks and unused spaces are rapidly colonised by buddleja. It grows VERY quickly, and if you plant a bush from a garden centre, you will need to cut it back every year. It will fill about 1 green bin per year by itself, so you'll need waste disposal.
Buddleja is a great plant to talk about for revealing priorities, politics, and the reliability/unreliability of information. Buddleja, as a plant, challenges you: what are you really asking when you ask the question? what are people really telling you? You will get 1000 answers from 1000 "plant influencers."
The point about "not being native" unpacks again in so many ways. On the one hand, it's a very rich source of nectar, and probably the best and easiest way to see butterflies in your garden. On the other, isn't everyone always saying native is better somewhere? The logic of immigration and invasion and indigeneity hovers like a butterfly above Buddleja, but here's why it might matter in your case: not being "native" means that caterpillars native to the UK don't really eat it.
Nectar is pretty much just nectar, albeit with higher or lower nutritive values, and butterflies will happily nurse on ANY old nectar - butterflies will drink blood, butterflies don't care - but butterflies care about where they lay their eggs, and caterpillars are surprisingly picky about what leaves they'll munch. And you can't have butterflies without caterpillars. But - because it is an easy and effective plant that will present you with the sight of butterflies - you'll hear a lot of recommendations for buddleja. So that's an example of where you can get LOST IN THE SAUCE with this question!
(I personally hate buddleja - I seem to be allergic to it - and I destroyed the one that came with our house. I don't like how blowsy it is, and how you have to constantly dispose of its stupid deadweight in biomass that you don't even WANT.)
So we can start with some food plants for caterpillars. Of these, the thorns might be problematic depending on your garden, but holly might be a nice thing Vigorous and violently prickly, but if you cut it back in winter you can use the cuttings to make a wreath. Of the other plants, honesty (lunaria annua) is not bad in a garden. Nasturtiums are super easy to grow, and you might enjoy ivy as a deliberate garden feature somewhere.
Interestingly, there's evidence that Painted Lady caterpillars will eat artichoke leaves (artichokes are thistles), and artichokes are a perennial in the UK - a really interesting statement in a border, a beautiful plant, not as abrasive as wild thistle, produces SPLENDID flowers that butterflies and bees love, and you can eat the flowerbuds with butter. A tall, striking plant with broad silvery-green leaves, it's perfectly ornamental.
So that's my suggestion of Globe Artichoke. What a great guy. So many uses. Nobody's doing it like Globe Artichoke.
You could keep some (potted) mint, or plant some oregano in your herb garden, to support the Mint Moth (not a butterfly, but a local cutie).
Then we can move on to flowers. The top-tier methodology is to look at flowers ACROSS TIME - not just things that flower all at once, but a garden that consistently feeds throughout the growing year.
In general, it's lucky - flowers that smell and look nice in a garden are often butterfly-friendly. We're looking for things that are pleasant in a garden and ideally serve multiple purposes. Honesty and ivy appear again here, adding weight to those suggestions. Rosemary and thyme join your herb garden, and there's a lot of support for thistles - and its sibling Cardoon - solidifying the idea of Globe Artichoke. Lavender is always super welcome, and with its strong scent, does a lot to attract visitors from far away, who can then stick around to see what other food you're offering.
Butterflies like warmth and heat (as do most of their plants). So that's lucky.
That's where most people stop, but just randomly naming plants isn't very helpful, is it? Here are some garden features you might want to develop in the future.
an apple tree, with muscari and daffodil bulbs planted at the base.
a garden arch twined with ivy or roses, used to separate spaces of the garden into "rooms." (Don't encourage ivy or roses to grow onto anything architectural!)
a buddleja, if you think it's pretty and you'd like to have one!
a kitchen herb garden for your use in cooking, with rosemary, thyme, oregano and lavender. Mint nearby, confined in a pot.
a "wild patch" that you don't need to access, where you allow things like teasels to grow. You don't need to allow this if you don't want to, or if you need to use all of your garden. Teasels, when dried, are nice for flower arranging, or you can give the heads to a fibercrafter friend as a little trinket.
A typical English cottage garden border with tall perennial cottage plants at the back and small plants at the front, with tall plants including globe artichoke and verbena/purpletop vervain at the back.
A demonstration of mastery of the English cottage garden - a true testament to the craft of the gardener - is that it should have flowers and multipurpose plants giving "a show" from March to November. There should be colour, shape, and form firing off - exactly like a timed fireworks display - throughout the entire growing year. You can visit National Trust gardens to see various examples of this being practiced.
In general, the public haven't developed the eye for looking at a garden bed - they just see Lumps of Flowers in a park and presume it always looks like that - but there's a whole art/science/craft/hobby to it. The Cottage Garden should be fairly low-maintenance, have colour throughout the year, and each plant should serve multiple purposes (i.e., scent+colour, flower+food plant, butterfly food + caterpillar food, flower you can cut for a quick bouquet to gift someone.)
Bear in mind that it's generally recommended by Wise People not to to anything "big" with new property until you've observed it for a year. If it's a bare space, then by all means, chuck stuff in - but if it's already a fairly functional garden, there might be timed displays you haven't seen and surprises that you haven't uncovered yet, so don't feel like you have to do everything this year, or anything that you don't want to do.
Welcome to the area and thanks for writing to me! I wish you the best of luck.
All of our abundance, all of our food, all of our real wealth and happiness begins and is sustained by our topsoil, our water and these little creatures. No pollinators, no food. It’s that simple. 🌻 🐞 🐝 #Inspiration #Plants #Herbs #hedgewitch #AncientBotanicals #AncientWisdom #bee #xerces #PlantCraft #SacredBeauty #herbalism #gardening #GoBotanical #Botanical #organic #phenology #Creativity #Nature #HandMade #BeautifulFeed #PlantPower #Aromatherapy #rosewitch #abundance #permaculture #crueltyfree https://www.instagram.com/p/BuvubPJAc-q/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=d5z3hzqnexhd
What is so unpleasant about stupice? I’m a tomato enjoyer but with limited experience regarding varieties beyond my local store.
(in reference to me commenting somewhere that I don't like Stupice tomatoes)
Stupice / Stupice Early is an heirloom strain of Czech tomato that's often recommended for a short growing season. If you live somewhere cold and dark, Stupice is supposed to be able to flower - and fruit - quite quickly, and is supposedly quick to ripen. It's cold-hardy and therefore doesn't need a greenhouse, either. It sounds like it should be a practical choice. I just don't like it.
I've tried it for several years and not enjoyed it or had any benefit at all, so stopped buying them. Obviously everyone's going to have different experiences, but I have just NEVER had any pleasure from Stupice.
I love and support heirloom varieties and their maintenance, and my favourite heirloom tomatoes are Green Zebra (gorgeous, GREEN WITH STRIPES, delightful flavour, I've always had more than I could deal with) and Marmande (lumpy, joyful, very French tomato that seems to absorb sunshine and sugar simply to radiate it back out at you with every bite. Fabulously Shaped.)
However, I am also tremendously pragmatic, and I think an especially good, rewarding, disease-resistant hybrid tomato is Sungold F1. I am a hobby gardener/allotmenteer. I am not trying to save the world with every single action. while I recognise the importance of celebrating heirloom varieties and keeping them in the gene pool, that isn't entirely up to me. I am also quite happy to spend £2 a year on tomato seeds every year - keeping seed companies in business and having a good experience - and Sungold F1 is just such a great producer, fun for kids, and pleasant company.
Glass gem from our allotment. This brilliant piece of First Nations bioengineering is available from Real Seeds in the UK. Ideally, saving and planting this heirloom seed for several generations will establish a strain suited to the UK’s growing conditions, and resilient to the changing climate more generally.
I had a lot of dreams for the allotment this year, but struggled with all my commitments. I get really hard on myself, as if it should be possible to get perfect grades in plantcraft, parenting, career, housekeeping and about 500 different hobbies - this is obviously bonkers of me. This poor neglected corn languished on the patio and wasn’t planted out until absurdly late in the year, and I blamed myself, put my dreams away and resigned myself to not having a single ear of glassy gemstone popping corn.
But the seasons shifted mild where I am, and this year I was forgiven. And given a great gift.
