Are your kids already bored with summer and looking for new things to do? What about planting a butterfly garden? It’s good for the landscape and environment plus they can use what they observe and learn for future class projects and possibly a science fair. This family project will attract kids to the outdoors where the living colors of plants and insects far surpass the most advanced television screens.

After a beautiful spring in Louisiana, butterfly gardening season is now upon us. With summer officially starting tomorrow, we have plenty of bedding plants and herbaceous perennials in bloom, and these naturally attract butterflies.

As interest increases in home gardening and landscape hobbies, people are more aware of natural habitats and environmental concerns. And with the need for more insect pollinators, gardeners are increasing their efforts to attract butterflies to their landscapes.

Many of the things we may already do in our home landscapes attract butterflies, but gardeners can provide a few things in a landscape to be successful.

Food, water, shelter and a place to reproduce are important. Shallow water sources, such as bird baths filled with moist pebbles or moist sand, are useful.

Butterflies don’t like standing water. Butterflies love old vegetable and fruit debris. Because butterflies are cold blooded, you also need to provide sun-basking areas – such as stones or boards – for adult butterflies. Nectar and larva plants for butterflies can include annual bedding plants, herbaceous perennials, native trees, native shrubs, vines and even plants like our popular evergreen azaleas.

Examples of bedding plants for butterfly gardening include vinca, impatiens, petunias, sunflowers, zinnias and salvia. Good herbaceous perennials are pentas, rudbeckia, butterfly bushes, coreopsis, daylily, verbena, lantana, cassia, gaillardia, milkweed and cuphea.

Butterfly gardens also can include trees and shrubs. All species of citrus are great if you like an evergreen tree in your butterfly garden. Oaks, ash, pawpaw, mayhaws, parsley hawthorn, elms and hackberries are good native deciduous trees. Evergreen shrubs for butterfly gardening include ligustrum and azaleas. Some plants attract several different butterflies while other plants only attract one specific type.

Common butterfly families found in Louisiana include milkweeds (monarchs), longwings (gulf fritillary), brushfoots (buckeye, viceroy and American painted lady), hackberry/goatweed (tawny emperor), skippers (dusty wings and skippers), swallowtails (tiger, zebra and eastern black), sulphurs/whites (sulphurs and Southern dog face), hairstreaks (gray and red banded), snouts/beaks (snouts) and satyrs (Carolina satyrs).

When you add nectar plants and larval plants to your landscape, you’ll be amazed how many butterflies you can attract. Many butterfly gardening plants will also attract hummingbirds.

Print a copy of Butterfly Gardening for Louisianians by visiting the LSU AgCenter website. Authors Dan Gill, Allen Owings, Ed Bush and Dale Pollet discuss the life cycle and feeding habits, provide a list of butterfly species and include an extensive listing of both host and nectar plants. Other great resources include two books by Dr. Gary Ross titled Gardening for Butterflies in Louisiana and Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Butterflies. Two color posters on butterflies are available from the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.

Grand Isle’s Butterfly Dome offers visitors a chance to experience close up some of the 139 butterfly species native to Louisiana. In north Louisiana, the town of Haynesville holds an annual butterfly celebration every September.

If your travel plans this summer have you in the Atlanta area, then schedule time to visit Calloway Gardens and Cecil B. Day Butterfly Center where 1,000 tropical butterflies representing more than 50 different species flutter freely through the air.