Butterfly Gardening On Vancouver Island

It was a good year for the butterfly garden a American Lady showed up one day and that is a rare find for Vancouver Island especially mid island. At the end of the season there was an irruption of Painted Ladies that put on a good show.

Painted Lady Butterfly (Vanessa cardui)

Butterflies need more than just nectar producing flowers, the first thing they need is sun, they need the heat to get moving so basking areas of warm sheltered rocks can help.

Butterflies also need minerals and salt in there diet and they will get this from puddling along pond edges, dung, carrion and urine. Some butterflies will feed on ripe fruit also.

Green Comma (Polygonia faunus) Feeding on road salt. Mount Washington road.

Western Spring Azure (Celastrina echo echo) Feeding at the pond edge.

The best photo opportunities are on the flowers, I like to have a continuous show of flowers through the season so as one finishes up others are starting to bloom, some are perennial and others are annuals.

When planting think about a few things like are you going to be able to get close to the plant to take pictures, will there be some space so you can get the background to blur, will there be flowers of different colors in the background.

Also plant lots, mass plantings are what attracts more the better.

Woodland Skipper (Ochlodes sylvanoides)

In the above picture I positioned myself so the Mexican Sunflower was in the background and it was far enough back to blur.

Western Tiger Swallowtail  (Papilio rutulus) on Sweet Rocket

Sweet Rocket (Hesperis)

First of the tall plants to start blooming in the spring, they really draw in the Swallowtails, there a short lived perennial so you need to let them reseed which they will do on there own. 

Western Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio rutulus) on Mock Orange.

Mock Orange (Philadelphus lewisii)

The swallowtail's really like this shrub, when it's blooming they are flying by regularly on there way to the Mock Orange. 

Western Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio rutulus) on Torch Lily.

Torch Lilly (Kniphofia uvaria)

Not a long bloomer and the deer eat the flowers sometimes other than that a great flower, hummingbirds and the swallowtails give them a good working over.

American Lady Butterfly (Vanessa virginiensis) on Hyssop

Giant Hyssop 

There are a number of cultivars of the this plant and I have a few of them, Blue Fortune seems to be a good one. perennial, hardy, deer proof, long blooming and popular with all the pollinators, easy to grow from seed.