This virtual tour is of the Painted Lady butterflies that visits our California native plant garden every spring during their annual migration north. Part of a series on butterfly gardening, it shows how to attract butterflies to your native garden by planting butterfly nectar and host plants.
The Painted Lady uses a variety of nectar and food plants, including mallows, thistles, lupines, buckwheats, legumes and many others. Use California native plants to attract these and many other butterflies to your butterfly garden.
You greatly increase your chances of attracting butterflies to your garden if you plant butterfly food plants. In most cases these are native plants. Butterflies will lay eggs on the host plants, the eggs will become caterpillars which will eat the host plants. After they pupate, they'll emerge, in your backyard, as butterflies and the cycle will begin again.