Hey Danny, congrats you have a lot of butterflies and plants which I ever wanted to have. I'm sure you have a huge garden can you post a picture of it? Here is a link that might be useful: landscapers utah

Yeah, that's no guy! Lucky for you! Your milkweed looks like it made it though the winter nicely. Mine is just coming back, and I don't have any flowers at the moment. I live in Northwest Houston, and it always gets a little colder than the local weather forecasts. My milkweed took a little bit of a beating this winter. I lost one that was in a pot. But I have lots of seeds to replenish with.

Beautiful pictures, Mary! I love the yellow females - the yellow and blue look so pretty together! Tigers are good about posing for the camera, aren't they? Sherry

I agree with the others about the area being small and it's hard to narrow it down to just a few plants when you're asking a bunch of butterfly freaks. :-D I think a lot of us try to attract as many different kinds of butterflies as we can, which means needing lots of different kinds of plants. I like to plant both host and nectar plants, and I think it's the best way to attract butterflies to your garden. The best nectar plants here are butterfly bush (although either one of my two put in that spot would probably hog the whole space, so I guess nix that idea or else get a real small one if there is such a thing), purple coneflower (which is also a host plant for Silvery Checkerspots), and Verbena bonariensis. Also well loved are zinnias, tithonia, and tropical milkweed. If it were me doing the garden and if I'd want a tithonia, that would definitely be the plant in the middle, as it gets 6-7 feet tall. Tropical milkweed would definitely be one of my choices because of the milkweeds I've tried here (swamp, tropical, purple, common, and butterfly weed), the Monarchs have laid their eggs on the tropical the most. The leaves are more tender than those of the other kinds, which is I suspect why they prefer that one. The other types of milkweed that I've tried bloom a certain period of time in the summer and then are done, whereas the tropical milkweed blooms all summer up until the first frost. I guess your choice of plants depends on what kinds of butterflies you want to attract; with a smaller garden, you're somewhat limited. I have multiple gardens, which are all big, so it's hard for me to narrow it down to just a few kinds of plants for you. I'm suggesting some, but then you'll have to decide what you want to have there. Since you're in zone 5, I think dill and fennel would do well there and they're host plants for the Black Swallowtail. I'd suggest rue but think it's only hardy to zone 6, so those two BST plants that I mentioned would be good and/or parsley. If the BSTs don't show up, then you'll have parsley for the kitchen. :) I'd recommend that you get familiar with what types of butterflies you could conceivably attract in your area. The BAMONA website would tell you what kinds have already been reported in your county. I don't know where you live, so I'll post a link to that website with the info for my page, and then you can change it to your state and county on that page. Snyder Co., PA butterflies You can also check on the BAMONA website for the host plants of individual species of butterflies, and you might want to check out the GW butterfly forum's FAQ to see what host plants members from here have personally seen the butterflies laying eggs on and/or seen the cats eating. Good luck with the garden. Probably the best thing I can suggest is to get hubby to dig up some more of the yard. ;-) I do like that cute little site that you already have. Cathy