Unfortunately, if you're like most of us, you've all ready spent a great deal of time and money destroying your best nectar and host plants. They're weeds, and you've probably dedicated immeasurable efforts to eradicating them. As you find out which ones are important to the butterflies you love, consider letting some of them live. When I mow the lawn, particularly on the sides, in the back, or in a few places somewhat hidden from view behind another plant in the front, I deliberately skip little bits of Phyla nodiflora when it's in bloom. Each time I mow, I leave different little bits of it so things don't get overgrown, but it's really fun to look out and see those mini-preserves all a'buzz with insect life. Sometimes I dig up a great weed and put it in one of my garden areas.

Yes, you can use pretty plants from your local stores too. They usually spray them with lots of junk to kill bugs, so you'll probably have to wait a season before your butterflies start to visit the flowers unless you get them from a butterfly friendly place.

Humm... which plants are best for the butterflies in your area? The best advice I've gotten on that to date was from the folks who run Meadow Beauty, a local native plant nursery. They told me, "Follow the butterflies." That's worked very well for me. If I'm out, and I see a butterfly I want in my yard, I follow it and watch it for a while. When it stops to sip nectar from a flower, that's the kind of plant I want to get. (Ok, no one has time for that, and usually neither do I. It would be more accurate to say that I occasionally reserve an hour for myself, drive to some park or field I think I might find butterflies at, and enjoy grabbing some new pictures, which conveniently documents which flowers the butterflies like to drink nectar from.) Removing plants from places that don't belong to you can get you in a world of trouble, so I suggest bringing a camera and taking a couple of pictures of the plant to help you identify it so you can get one, or go back and find it when it's in seed.

That method might not work as well with high fast fliers like the Giant Swallowtail butterfly, but it works with enough butterflies that it's useful. The butterflies will show you what they like best. When I go to Meadow Beauty to buy a new plant, I just stand there and watch for a while, and I get the plant that either has the butterfly I'm particularly interested in that day, or the flowering plant that is attracting the most kinds of butterflies, or the plant with caterpillars of a type of butterfly I want to introduce to my yard all ready on it.