These 11 Plants Will Bring More Butterflies and Color to Your Garden

A native plant that works great as a ground cover, California lilac creates a bed of blue flowers that bring butterflies to the yard, Casazza says. Once established, this butterfly plant is low-maintenance and drought-tolerant.

USDA Hardiness Zones: 7-10

With fuzzy colorful centers and clusters of pink, red, purple, yellow, or orange blooms, coneflowers are another plant that butterflies love.

“No matter the size of your space, try sprinkling in a few of these beauties, and you're sure to have winged visitors in no time,” Cummins says.

These wildflowers prefer full sun, and some can grow as tall as five feet.

USDA Hardiness Zones: 4-9

They’re called beautyberries for a reason! The bright purple iridescent clusters of berries on the American beautyberry shrub that appear in autumn look as though they could inspire the next Pantone Color of the Year.

These shrubs invite birds to snack on their berries, and their blooms attract other winged pollinators like the spring azure butterfly. Once they establish their roots, they’re drought-tolerant and a fairly low-maintenance shrub.

USDA Hardiness Zones: 6-11

Sunflowers, which can grow up to 12 feet tall, make the perfect landing pad for butterflies, which appreciate the easy access to the nectar. These butterfly plants can also attract bees, so they're wonderful for your local ecosystem.

Sunflowers prefer loose, well-draining soil and these sun-loving plants do best when they get at least 6 to 8 hours of sun exposure.

USDA Hardiness Zones: 1-11

Hollyhock flowers are a gorgeous addition to gardens, with their crepe-like petals in pretty colors like champagne, hot pink, and apricot. Bonus: The way their flowers bloom outward (instead of upward) on the stalk makes it easy to see visiting butterflies (and maybe hummingbirds, too!).

These pretty self-seeding flowers prefer well-draining soil. These butterfly plants are sun worshippers, too, and do best when they get at least six hours of sunshine.

USDA Hardiness Zones: 3-8

Butterflies love lavender for some of the same reasons we do: The purple cylindrical blooms are nice and fragrant.

Beyond its beauty and butterfly-attracting capabilities, lavender is also one the many wonderful edible plants you can grow in your garden and it’s among the plants that can naturally repel mosquitoes. Make sure to plant lavender in sunny spots in soil with neutral pH.

USDA Hardiness Zones: 5-9

Even if you weren't born with a green thumb, you can probably grow geraniums pretty easily. Gardeners consider these pink, red, and white flowers with star-shaped leaves to be one of the best flowers for butterflies, and, if you have some of these in your garden, you may even get some visits from hummingbirds.

Geraniums need full sun and prefer moist, well-drained soil.

USDA Hardiness Zones: 3-9

Not only do black-eyed Susans provide perfect steady landing pads for butterflies, but these flowers are pretty much the pollinators' equivalent of a “supersized” order.

The eye of the flower head often has 250 to 500 individual flowers, which provides tons of nectar for pollinators, according to the University of Maryland Extension. Black-eyed Susans need full sun and they can sprout up to 7 feet tall.

USDA Hardiness Zones: 3-9

One of the easiest butterfly plants to grow is goldenrod. It needs full sun and well-drained soil, but it’s a forgiving plant when it comes to drought and poor soil conditions, according to the North Carolina State Extension.

You might need to look closely to spot the bees and butterflies visiting your goldenrod, though, because they can easily blend into the golden flowers.

USDA Hardiness Zones: 2-9