10 Best Plants That Attract Butterflies (From My Own Backyard)
And the formula is simpler than most articles make it sound. Plant a few heavy-blooming perennials butterflies can’t resist, fill the gaps with cheap annuals that bloom all summer, and add at least one plant their caterpillars can eat. That’s the whole secret. No special design, no certification, no fancy gear.
The plants below are ranked easiest and highest-payoff first. Most are perennials, meaning you plant them once and they come back every year. A couple are annuals that earn their spot by blooming nonstop until frost. Everything here grows in average soil, wants mostly sun, and forgives neglect, because mine certainly get plenty of it.
If you want more butterflies in your yard, the formula is simpler than most articles make it sound: plant a few heavy-blooming perennials they can’t resist, fill the gaps with cheap annuals that flower all summer, and add at least one plant their caterpillars can eat. That’s it. No special design, no certification, no fancy gear.
The plants below are ranked with the easiest, highest-payoff options first. Most are perennials, meaning you plant them once and they come back every year. A couple are annuals that earn their spot by blooming nonstop from June until frost. Everything on this list grows in average soil, wants mostly sun, and forgives neglect.
Plants That Attract Butterflies: Perennials vs. Annuals
Quick version, because it shapes everything below.
Perennials like butterfly bush and coneflower are your backbone. They cost more up front ($15 to $30 for a shrub), but they return bigger every spring and the workload drops to almost nothing after the first year.
Annuals like zinnias die at frost, but a $3 seed packet covers a whole bed and they bloom harder and longer than almost any perennial. They’re your color boosters while young perennials fill in.
A butterfly yard needs both: the backbone brings butterflies back year after year, the boosters keep nectar flowing every single week of the season.
1. Butterfly Bush (Buddleia)
If you only plant one thing from this list, make it this one. The name isn’t marketing. The long, cone-shaped flower spikes are loaded with nectar, and on a warm July afternoon a single mature bush can have a dozen butterflies working it at once, along with hummingbirds and bees.
It’s also one of the easiest shrubs you can grow. Hardy in zones 5 through 9, butterfly bush wants full sun and decent drainage, and that’s about the whole list of demands. It shrugs off drought once established, deer leave it alone, and it blooms on new growth, so even a rough winter doesn’t cost you flowers. Skip the fertilizer; rich soil actually gives you more leaves and fewer blooms.
Two care notes that matter. First, cut it back hard in early spring, down to 12 to 18 inches. It looks brutal and the plant loves it, responding with fresh growth and bigger flower spikes. Don’t prune in fall; the hollow stems can take in water and freeze. Second, deadhead the spent spikes through summer and it will keep pumping out new ones into September.
Varieties worth hunting down:
- ‘Black Knight’: the classic, deep purple-black spikes on a big 6 to 8 foot shrub. Plant it where it has room.
- ‘Miss Molly’: the closest thing to a true red, around 4 to 5 feet, and nearly seedless.
- ‘Pugster Blue’: a dwarf at about 2 feet with full-size flower spikes. This is the one for containers and small beds.
- Tree-form butterfly bush: some nurseries train Buddleia to a single trunk, sold as a “butterfly tree.” Same plant, same easy care, but it reads as a small ornamental tree and makes a great focal point by a patio.
One honest caveat: butterfly bush self-seeds aggressively in some regions and is restricted in Oregon and Washington. If that’s you, stick to the sterile and near-sterile cultivars like the Pugster series, Lo & Behold, and Miss Molly. You get the butterflies without the guilt.
2. Zinnias
Zinnias are annuals, and they’re still the best $3 you’ll spend on a butterfly garden. Direct-sow the seeds after your last frost, and you’ll have blooms in about 60 days that don’t quit until the first freeze. No perennial matches that pace. Butterflies, especially monarchs and swallowtails, treat a zinnia patch like a buffet line.
Growing them is close to foolproof: full sun, average soil, don’t overwater. The one real enemy is powdery mildew, which shows up when plants are crowded and damp. Give them spacing and airflow, water at the base instead of overhead, and you’ll mostly avoid it.
A tip most articles skip: butterflies have an easier time feeding on single and semi-double flowered zinnias, where the center is exposed, than on the big fluffy doubles. Mix some singles in even if you love the dahlia types.
Varieties worth growing:
- ‘Zahara’ and ‘Profusion’ series: shorter, mounded, disease-resistant, and they self-clean so you never deadhead. Best choice for borders and beginners.
- ‘Benary’s Giant’: tall, huge blooms, the variety flower farmers grow. Butterflies mob it and it makes an excellent cut flower, so you get bouquets out of the deal.
- ‘State Fair’ mix: old-school, tall, cheap, and tough.
Sow a second round of seeds in early July and you’ll have fresh plants peaking in September, right when migrating monarchs come through and need fuel most.
3. Milkweed
Here’s the part most butterfly lists get wrong: nectar plants feed adult butterflies, but if you want butterflies to actually live and breed in your yard instead of just passing through, you need host plants their caterpillars can eat. For monarchs, that’s milkweed, full stop. It is the only plant monarch caterpillars can survive on.
Plant it and you stop being a rest stop and become a nursery. You’ll see eggs on the leaf undersides, then the striped caterpillars, and if you’re lucky, a chrysalis. Kids lose their minds over this, in the best way.
Go with a native species for your region: butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa) with bright orange blooms for dry sunny spots, or swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) with pink blooms if your soil runs moist. Both are perennials hardy to zone 3, and both behave better in beds than common milkweed, which spreads by runners. Expect chewed leaves; that’s the plant doing its job.
4. Coneflower (Echinacea)
A native prairie perennial that hits the trifecta: butterflies love the nectar, the dead center cones feed goldfinches all winter, and the plant itself is nearly indestructible in zones 3 through 9. Full sun, any reasonable soil, serious drought tolerance once established. Leave the seed heads standing in fall instead of cutting them; the birds will thank you and the stems shelter overwintering insects.
5. Lantana
In the South this is a perennial; everywhere else, treat it as a heat-proof annual for pots and borders. Either way it blooms in multicolored clusters that butterflies find irresistible, and it laughs at August heat that wilts everything else. If your butterfly traffic dies in midsummer, lantana fixes it.
6. Black-Eyed Susan (Rudbeckia)
Cheerful, golden, native, and about as hard to kill as a plant gets. Blooms midsummer into fall in zones 3 through 9 and spreads politely into drifts, which is exactly what butterflies prefer: big blocks of one flower rather than single plants scattered around. Pairs naturally with coneflower.
7. Salvia
Spiky purple-blue blooms from late spring onward, and if you shear it back after the first flush it blooms again. Perennial varieties like ‘May Night’ handle zones 4 through 8. Bonus: deer and rabbits skip it, and hummingbirds work it as hard as the butterflies do.
8. Verbena
Tall verbena (Verbena bonariensis) is the butterfly sleeper hit. Airy, see-through stems topped with purple flower clusters that butterflies land on constantly. It weaves between other plants without crowding them and self-seeds enough to keep itself going. Treat as an annual north of zone 7.
9. Coreopsis
Masses of small yellow daisies on a tough native perennial, zones 4 through 9. ‘Moonbeam’ is the famous one. It blooms for months with zero input and tolerates poor, sandy soil where fussier plants sulk.
10. Asters
The season closer. When the zinnias are fading and almost nothing else is blooming in late September and October, asters open in purple and pink right as migrating butterflies need a last nectar stop. Native perennials, zones 3 through 8. Every serious butterfly garden ends the season with asters.
A Few Things That Matter More Than Plant Choice
Skip the pesticides entirely. This is non-negotiable. Sprays don’t distinguish between caterpillars and pests, and a butterfly garden with insecticide is just a flower bed. If you must treat something, hand-pick or spot-treat, never broadcast.
Plant in clumps, not singles. Three zinnias scattered around the yard are easy to miss. A 3-foot block of them is visible to a butterfly cruising 20 feet up. Group at least three of each plant together.
Give them sun and shelter. Butterflies feed in full sun and avoid wind. A bed on the south side of a fence or hedge outperforms an exposed one.
Add a puddling spot. A shallow dish of wet sand gives butterflies the minerals they can’t get from nectar. Cheap, weird, effective.
The Bottom Line
Start with a butterfly bush for the backbone, a packet of zinnia seeds for instant color, and one milkweed for the monarchs. That’s under $40 and one weekend, and it covers nectar, season-long bloom, and a host plant. Add the rest of these plants that attract butterflies as you go. By the second summer the perennials hit their stride and your yard joins the local butterfly circuit for good.
Which one are you planting first? If you’ve already got a butterfly bush blooming, the comments are open for bragging.