They came uninvited and unexpected to Brad Bray’s garden in Orland Hills. Their offspring dined on delicate dill leaves while the adults–black swallowtail butterflies–fluttered their iridescent wings as they stuck their proboscises where they truly belonged–in his wildflowers.
“I unwittingly was attracting them with the plants that were there,” Bray said. “They sought me out and I was bitten by the butterfly interest.”
Despite the colorful caterpillars chomping on his parsley, fennel and other herbs, Bray didn’t mind one bit. That was five years ago and his metamorphosis as a butterfly aficionado is complete.
Bray has planted flowers and herbs that attract hundreds of swallowtails and other gossamer-winged delights into his back yard. In a small greenhouse, he raises their eggs, larvae and chrysalises, which emerge as spectacular butterflies. His garden is among 60 in the Chicago metropolitan area that will be featured on the Illinois Audubon Society’s first annual Butterfly Garden Tour July 28 and 29.
The growing interest in butterfly gardens is rivaled by the growing popularity of butterflies in general. Hundreds of thousands of visitors have been drawn to three exhibits in the city that feature live butterflies. Two–“Butterflies!” at the Brookfield Zoo in Brookfield and “Living Colors: A Butterfly Garden” at the Field Museum–are temporary exhibits. The third, the Judy Istock Butterfly Haven, is a permanent exhibit at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum in Chicago.
Given that, the Audubon Butterfly Garden Tour seemed a natural fit for the Audubon Society’s fundraising efforts, says Marilyn Campbell, executive director of the Illinois Audubon Society in Danville. “We’re always needing funds and we’ve been doing land acquisition,” she says. “Each year, an increasing amount of land is lost to urban sprawl and habitat for butterflies, birds and other wildlife disappears.”
The society has acquired several hundred acres of important habitat throughout the state, including the 80-acre Black-crown Marsh in McHenry County. Proceeds from the tour (tickets are $12 each and can be used all weekend) will benefit the society’s wetland and prairie restoration programs and help purchase land to create more wildlife sanctuaries.
Modeled after the Midwest Pond & Koi Society’s popular pond walks, the butterfly garden tour will provide maps, and descriptions and addresses of participating public and private gardens in Lake, Cook, Kane, DuPage, Will and McHenry Counties.
From urban back yards and streetside suburban cottage gardens to nature centers, schools, churches, a bog, woodlands and prairies, no two gardens on the tour are alike. “The [residential] gardens are as diverse as their owners. Each person comes from it in their own unique way,” says tour organizer and chairwoman Kay MacNeil, whose Frankfort garden is among the stops. MacNeil’s expansive garden–a haven to bluebirds, frogs and other wildlife–combines flowers, herbs and vegetables. Dragonflies routinely patrol her pond while butterflies visit the butterfly bush (buddleia), cardinal flower (lobelia) and butterfly weed (asclepias).
“I have five kinds of milkweed. I can remember 20 years ago showing people my garden and they were twittering over a stand of common milkweed, but my kids would be out there with magnifying glasses [looking for butterfly eggs],” MacNeil says.
These are not your typical gardens. Most are organic, no synthetic chemicals or bug sprays here. And don’t be surprised if you come across stinging nettles, thistles, Queen Anne’s lace, dandelions, red clover or goldenrods. They’re all part of the butterfly garden plant repertoire.
Food and drink
Anne Browne caters to these winged delights in her Park Ridge garden. “I’ve seen quite a few monarchs, tiger and black swallowtails, cabbage whites and hairstreaks,” Browne says. She grows butterfly bush, monarda, phlox, sedum and butterfly weed. She also provides drinks. “Butterflies like a mud puddle and rocks in the sun. I keep an area damp and wet for them. They also like overripe fruit, so I put a little piece of banana by a mud puddle.”
The garden isn’t big compared to some, but “it’s important to show that even if you don’t have a large yard, you can have an animal-friendly yard,” she says.
Carolyn Finzer has planted more than 50 herbs to attract butterflies to her Naperville garden. “There’s no portion of our yard that is lawn. It’s all groundcovers, herbs–very textural and very fragrant,” she says.
Butterflies visit her chamomile, rosemary and sage blossoms. Wood-chip paths lead through native hawthorns, ornamental grasses, plume poppy, Joe Pye weed, cup plant (silphium) and many other perennials.
Finzer tempts butterflies with melon and orange rinds that she places in compote bowls. “They suck the juice, and they just love that little bit of fruit.”
John and Sandy Klausman’s 11/2-acre garden in Crete brims with butterfly bushes, monarda, coneflowers and flowering vines. This couple has amassed a collection of perennials that include more than 400 varieties of daylilies, 300 hostas and an assortment of peonies, lilacs and hydrangeas. Adjacent to a forest preserve, this country garden is a magnet for butterflies that visit the woodland and open areas.
More than 90 species
John Bouseman, associate professional scientist for the Illinois Natural History Survey in Champaign, has been attracted to butterflies for decades. “They’re just very charismatic creatures. They symbolize or epitomize Mother Nature in the minds of a lot of people.”
Bouseman and fellow scientist James G. Sternberg co-authored “Field Guide to the Butterflies of Illinois” (Illinois Natural History Survey, $19.95). Released in January, this fascinating book couples more than 300 color photographs with distribution maps indicating where more than 90 butterfly species may be found throughout the state. It provides details about butterfly habitats and life cycles as well as food and nectar plants.
If you are familiar only with the common monarch, “Field Guide to the Butterflies of Illinois” is an eye-opener. Besides Illinois’ largest butterfly–the giant swallowtail with its 6-inch wingspan–there are tiny hairstreaks, wood satyrs, sulphurs, blues, coppers, harvesters, checkerspots, fritillaries, wood nymphs, painted ladies, red admirals, buckeyes, tortoiseshells, brush-footed butterflies and many more that may be found in northeastern Illinois.
“You could stand on Michigan Avenue and a red admiral could land on your arm. That’s how common they are [this summer],” Bouseman says.
What’s for dinner?
Landscape designer Marcy Stewart Pyziak’s gardens in Manhattan are a banquet that provides food for larva, nectar for butterflies.
“I have a mixture of perennials, annuals and herbs that really draws them,” Pyziak says. Verbena bonariensis, an annual that Pyziak characterizes as a butterfly magnet, is a food source along with coneflowers, liatris and other native perennials. The delicate, feathery leaves of bronze fennel attract swallowtails, which lay eggs on the plants.
“People need to have enough diversity, not just with nectar sources but plants for the larva. You have to plant woodies [trees and shrubs] for them too,” Pyziak says. You’ll find pawpaw tree, hackberry (for the hackberry butterfly), sassafras, willow, black cherry and spicebush (Lindera) on her grounds. “I love designing gardens for three or four neighbors together so I can create a large butterfly habitat. A combination of trees, shrubs and other plants helps keep the butterflies in the area.”
Bob Strempel and Carla Schmakel, winners of the Chicago Tribune’s Glorious Gardens 2000 contest for Best Wildlife Garden, will open their garden in Round Lake for the tour. Their organic garden, created around a new subdivision home, features native trees, shrubs and perennials all chosen to attract birds, butterflies and other critters. Mourning cloak butterflies visit their milkweeds and the Eastern tiger swallowtail is a regular visitor to wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa). The red-spotted purple butterfly lays eggs on the red osier dogwood.
“A lot of butterflies depend on trees to lay their eggs. One winter, we even noticed a chrysalis hanging from a chokeberry,” Strempel says.
Visitors will delight at Mark Peligrino’s half-acre garden in Worth, which features a 10-foot waterfall. A professional landscaper, he has added fruit trees, ornamental grasses and an assortment of flowers for hummingbirds and butterflies. Peligrino and other garden hosts will be selling plants that attract butterflies.
Grow your own
Like Brad Bray, Nancy Carter was growing vegetables at her Blue Island garden when black swallowtails deposited eggs on a plant called rue. “I brought them inside and fed [the caterpillars] the rue,” Carter says.
Because other insects, birds, frogs and snakes prey upon butterfly larva, Carter houses the crawlers and their leafy meals indoors in an aquarium with a screen on top. From the caterpillar stage to chrysalis takes a few weeks. Another 10 to 15 days and the butterflies emerge.
“The season starts in May and goes on the whole summer with the swallowtails. I release them right away unless the weather is poor,” says Carter, who last summer raised and released 95 black swallowtails and 76 monarch butterflies.
As butterfly habitat disappears with urban sprawl, every gardener who adds a few plants for food and nectar is helping out. “I have no doubt that it’s beneficial,” Bouseman says.
Tickets for the Illinois Audubon Society’s first annual Butterfly Garden Tour, July 28 and 29, are $12. Send checks, payable to Illinois Audubon Society, by July 16 to: Jeanne DeRaimo, 706 Colony Lane, Frankfort, IL 60423. For more information, call 815-469-1294, or email: IASgardentour@aol.com. Or visit the IAS Web site at illinoisaudubon.org/involved.html#events.
Attract butterflies to your garden
Turn your patch of paradise into a butterfly haven. You don’t need a large yard to see them up close. Pots filled with butterflies’ favorite plants on a deck, patio or balcony will bring them in too.
– Plant these sun-loving flowers as nectar sources: ageratum, asters, bee balm, butterfly bush, candytuft, coneflower, coreopsis, cosmos, gaillardia, goldenrod, lantana, lobelia, marigold, milkweed, nicotiana, phlox, scabiosa, sedum, sweet alyssum, verbena and zinnia.
– Some food sources for larvae include: borage, clover, dill, parsley, rue, fennel, carrots, hollyhocks, lupines, milkweed, false nettle (Boehmeria cylindrica), stinging nettle (Urtica dioica), apple and cherry trees, flowering dogwood, birch, chokeberry, hawthorn, poplar, aspen, spicebush, sumac, New Jersey tea, wild indigo (baptisia) and viburnum.
– When planting, keep in mind that many butterflies prefer sunny, open areas that are protected from the wind.
– Protect munching caterpillars from predators by placing a fine mesh screen around and over the host plant. If the caterpillar devours all of the host plant before it sheds its skin and becomes a chrysalis, move it to another host plant.
– Don’t use toxic pesticides or herbicides, which harm butterflies, their eggs or larva.
– Leave an occasional piece of overripe fruit on a rock for them.
– Water a sunny spot of soil near your flowers where butterflies can land on the mud for a drink.
– Not all butterflies are free come autumn. Some chrysalises, suspended from leaves and branches like tiny mummies, will remain over winter until the butterfly emerges
in spring. To protect these tiny creatures, which may literally hang out for months, don’t cut perennials back until spring.
— Nina Koziol
