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Garden Project: Planting the Best Milkweeds for Gardens and Monarch Butterflies

Most gardeners don’t realize how many beautiful milkweeds (Asclepias spp.) there are for the garden. Here are our favorites for feed monarchs beautifully.

“Monarch butterflies rely on milkweed (Asclepias spp.) flowers and foliage to complete their life cycle. Eggs are laid on milkweed foliage, a host plant for the emerging caterpillars. Chemicals in the milkweed foliage offer protection to the caterpillars, and mature monarch butterflies, making them taste toxic and terrible to would-be predators. Adult monarchs also feed on the nectar-rich flowers of these unique and beautiful plants.” -Mike Darcy

Click here to read an article about how to grow milkweed from seed.

Click here to download the step-by-step pdf.

 

About JESSIE KEITH

Plants are the lens Jessie views the world through because they’re all-sustaining. (“They feed, clothe, house and heal us. They produce the air we breathe and even make us smell pretty.”) She’s a garden writer and photographer with degrees in both horticulture and plant biology from Purdue and Michigan State Universities. Her degrees were bolstered by internships at Longwood Gardens and the American Horticultural Society. She has since worked for many horticultural institutions and companies and now manages communications for Sun Gro Horticulture, the parent company of Black Gold. Her joy is sharing all things green and lovely with her two daughters.

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