Butterflies are an easy way to add beauty and whimsy to any garden.
You can attract native butterflies to your garden by growing the right host plants. This will feed the life cycle of butterflies and increase the population.
According to Australian butterfly expert Helen Schwencke, raising butterflies is a simple introduction to interacting with your natural environment, and you don’t necessarily need a large garden to do it.
“You can have a balcony with a native fig or a weeping fig on it and you’ll get common crow [butterflies],” she told ABC Online.
Helen identified the best plants to attract butterflies in South-East Queensland. Here, she’s listed her top 10:
1. Climbing senna (Senna gaudichaudii): Yellow migrant, small grass-yellow, large grass-yellow
2. Corky milk-vine (Secamone elliptica): Common crow, blue tiger
3. Emu foot (Cullen tenax): Chequered swallowtail, common grass-blue, tailed pea-blue
4. Karamat (Hygrophila angustifolia): Chocolate argus, meadow argus, varied eggfly, dainty grass-blue
5. Love flower (Pseuderanthemum variabile): Australian leafwing, blue argus, bluebanded eggfly, danaid eggfly, varied eggfly
6. Mangrove wax-flower vine (Cynanchum carnosum): Swamp tiger, lesser wanderer, common crow
7. Native mulberry (Pipturus argenteus): Jezebel nymph, speckled line-blue, yellow admiral
8. Thornless caper (Capparis lucida):Caper white, chalky pearl-white, caper gull
9. Zig zag vine (Melodorum leichhardtii): Four-barred swordtail, pale triangle, eastern dusk-flat
10. Finger lime (Citrus australasica), also citrus: mandarin, lime, orange trees – Orchard swallowtail, fuscous swallowtail, dainty swallowtail
How to attract butterflies to your yard