How to Create a Monarch Butterfly Waystation Garden
Habitats for Monarchs
Our Monarch waystation is a work in progress.
Jill Spencer
Monarch waystations are habitats gardeners in North American can create in their yards for Monarch butterflies and caterpillars.
Waystations provide Monarchs with safe places to feed and breed during spring and summer, before temperatures drop and they travel south. Waystations also provide temporary food and shelter for the butterflies as they migrate.
Monarch caterpillars feed on milkweed.
Jill Spencer
In the United States and parts of Canada, East Coast Monarch butterflies migrate to the Gulf Coast and northern Mexico every fall. On the West Coast, they migrate to southern California and Arizona.
Jill Spencer
Here in Maryland, we created a Monarch waystation in our backyard, and it's been a wonderful experience. If you live in Monarch breeding areas that experience cold winters, you might enjoy starting a waystation, too.
Scroll down now to learn
- why you should grow a waystation
- the plants and seeds you'll need
- steps you can complete to create one.
Common milkweed, butterfly weed, and Mexican butterfly weed are among the plants that grow in our waystation garden.
Jill Spencer
Why Grow a Waystation?
I started the common, orange, and tropical milkweed in our waystation by direct sowing, that is, sowing the seeds directly into a prepared bed.
Jill Spencer
Watch the Monarch Life Cycle
Our waystation began as a cutting garden, a 10 square foot area in an out-of-the-way spot in our backyard where, for one summer, I grew flowers solely to cut them for bouquets.
Although I liked the bouquets, I quickly realized that what I enjoy most about growing flowers isn't harvesting them but caring for them and observing the creatures they attract.
In waystations, Monarch butterflies lay their eggs, and the caterpillars that hatch from those eggs feed, grow, and eventually form chrysalises or cocoons from which Monarch butterflies emerge. As a waystation gardener, I've been privileged to observe the Monarch life cycle first hand, from egg to newly emerged butterfly.
Monarch eggs are small, pale and delicate while Monarch caterpillars look as if they're made of marzipan. Monarch chrysalises, on the other hand, are absolute jewels with polished, light green exteriors that darken as the butterfly inside develops. At the top of each chrysalis is a row of small gold dots.
Beautiful.
Monarch chrysalises are jade green gems dotted with gold. This one is attached to the picket fence that fronts a section of our waystation.
Jill Spencer
Because the entire metamorphosis, from egg to butterfly, takes only a few weeks, it's repeated throughout the growing season. In this way, waystations are home to successive generations of Monarchs.
If you grow a Monarch waystation garden, you'll see the Monarch lifecycle up close again and again from spring into fall.
You'll also observe additional pollinators like bees, moths, and the other butterflies your waystation attracts.
Milkweeds are host plants for several types of pollinators, including Monarchs, Queen butterflies and Tussock moths. Pictured: a Monarch caterpillar.
Jill Spencer
So far, my favorite part of waystation gardening is watching Monarch caterpillars. They are fearless fellows, completely unlike the Variegated Fritillary and Common Buckeye caterpillars I've previously photographed. Monarch caterpillars raise their black filaments and rear up to challenge me when I take their photos. Sometimes, they act as if they're going to butt the camera.
I've captured very few good shots of Monarch butterflies. The crunching of my shoes on the gravel garden path sends them fluttering away. In contrast, I've taken numerous photos of Tiger Swallowtails, which were enormous this year, and let me get quite close to them with my camera as they feed.
Monarch females usually deposit eggs on the undersides of milkweed leaves.
Jill Spencer
Help Save the Monarch
An even better reason to grow a waystation is that it's beneficial to Monarchs.
Due to habitat loss and other factors, Monarch populations are dwindling. In fact, Monarchs are in such dire straits that they may soon have protected status in the United States under the Endangered Species Act.
As a waystation gardener, you'll join a multitude of other gardeners in North America who are working to restore the habitat Monarchs need to survive.
'Nuff said.
Jill Spencer
- Status of the Monarch Butterfly
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began deliberations about placing Monarchs on the endangered species list in 2014 when the service was first petitioned. A decision on the Monarch's status will be decided December 15, 2020.
Waystation Basics
Waystations contain both host plants and nectar plants. Pictured: young common milkweed (a host plant) and Canada goldenrod (a nectar plant).
Jill Spencer
What's in a Waystation?
To be effective, waystations need a sufficient number of host plants (milkweed) and nectar plants (flowering annuals, perennials and biennials).
Milkweed
Like the Queen butterfly, Monarchs are "milkweed butterflies." In other words, milkweed is an integral, necessary part of their life cycle.
Monarch females usually lay single eggs on the undersides of milkweed leaves. The caterpillars that emerge from the eggs feed on the milkweed, shedding their skins as they grow. The caterpillars go through four instars (stages between molts) before forming the chrysalis from which they emerge as butterflies.
First, second and third instar Monarch larvae often trench feed, eating only a few layers of a leaf's surface rather than chewing through it. Pictured: a young Monarch caterpillar trenches on A. tuberosa, orange milkweed.
Jill Spencer
As Monarch caterpillars grow, they eat lots and lots of milkweed.
Monarch Watch, an organization dedicated to the study and conservation of Monarch butterflies, recommends at least two types of milkweed per waystation and about a dozen milkweed plants. Monarch Watch also recommends the plants be closely spaced to provide protection from predators for the eggs and caterpillars.
The caterpillars stripped our common milkweed plants of leaves several times. Tropical milkweed was their second favorite, followed by whorled.
Jill Spencer
Our Monarch waystation has five types of milkweed, four of them native: common milkweed (A. syriaca), swamp milkweed (A. incarnata), whorled milkweed (A. verticillata), butterfly weed (A. tuberosa), and tropical butterfly weed (A. curassavica), a non-native plant.
Having various types means that the caterpillars have a steady supply of leaves, as each kind of milkweed develops on a different time schedule.
Our orange milkweed, for instance, germinated later than the common milkweed but bloomed the earliest and the longest. Our first-year common milkweed plants didn't bloom at all, probably because the Monarch caterpillars preferred their leaves over the others, and stripped the plants repeatedly throughout the growing season before they could set blooms.
Whorled milkweed, Asclepias verticillata, is a Monarch host plant with needle-like leaves. Pictured: Whirled milkweed in bud.
Jill Spencer
Although any milkweed will do for your waystation garden, it's best to choose at least two milkweed species that are native to your area.
Native plants have adapted to the area over time. As a result, they are easier to grow and care for than non-native plants, which may be less impervious to the pests, diseases, and other environmental issues that persist where you live.
Also, native milkweed will be on the same timetable as the Monarch, coming to the end of its life cycle when temperatures drop rather than continuing to bloom— and potentially encouraging Monarch butterflies to tarry when they should begin migrating.
We opted to grow one controversial non-native milkweed in our waystation, tropical milkweed, also called Mexican milkweed, because I really love its tall, upright stems and showy orange-red flowers. When grown out of its native region, however, tropical milkweed can be problematic and requires careful monitoring. I wouldn't recommend it for everyone.
Although Mexican milkweed isn't native to Maryland, I grew a patch this year from seeds collected from a single plant purchased last year. The seeds germinate easily.
Jill Spencer
Seeds or Plugs?
Milkweed Plugs
Purchasing milkweed plants can be pricey. I recently pitched in with a friend to buy a flat of common milkweed from MonarchWatch.org's Milkweed Market for the community garden where we volunteer. We opted to buy plugs because as volunteers we have little control over when and how much the gardens are mulched, and we worried our seeds and seedlings would be smothered.
The flat of 32 plugs from the Milkweed Market cost $74 and arrived in October rather than in the spring due to hot temperatures that prevented on-time shipping. By the time they arrived, the plugs were essentially root stock. If the stock takes root, we should have a nice patch of A. syriaca in the garden next spring; however, if we'd realized what we were getting, we probably would have dug up milkweed roots from the established milkweed patches in our own gardens and transplanted them for free.
Milkweed Seeds
Growing milkweed from seed is less expensive than purchasing milkweed plants.
You can buy seed at reasonable prices online or in gardening centers.
You can also collect milkweed seed yourself, remove the floss, chill it in the fridge for a month, and then sow the seed in late winter or early spring.
I direct-sowed seeds purchased from Seed Needs and Outsidepride as well as seeds I collected, and ended up with three nice beds of milkweed. Even the common milkweed germinated well, which surprised me because it's known to have low germination rates. I credit our success to how we prepped our waystation beds, which is described below.
Before chilling milkweed seed, remove the floss.
Jill Spencer
Milkweed Species You Might Try
| Common Names | Description | Scientific Name | |
|---|---|---|---|
Clasping Milkweed | Clasping flowers and wavy leaves | Asclepias amplexicaulus |
|
Common Milkweed | Wide leaves, bumpy seed pods | A. syriaca |
|
Fewflowered Milkweed | Rare; orange flowers and lance leaves; grows in marshes, swamps, tidal areas | A. lanceolata |
|
Fourleaf Milkweed | Grows in rocky, dry shade areas in high altitude areas | A. quadrifolia |
|
Green Comet Milkweed | Green flowers and wavy foliage; loved by bees; prefers dry, rocky soil | A. viridiflora |
|
Orange Milkweed, Butterfly Milkweed, Butterfly Weed | Orange showy flowers, no milky sap; likes full sun or part shade | A. tuberosa |
|
Poke Milkweed | Drooping flowers like a lilac; prefers meadows and cool areas | A. exaltata |
|
Purple Milkweed | A rare species; grows in woodlands | A. purpurascens |
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Red Milkweed | Very rare; wavy leaves; grows in sphagnum bogs | A. rubra |
|
Redring Milkweed | Grows naturally in dry woodlands and fields; smooth seed pods and waxy white flowers | A. variegata |
|
Swamp Milkweed | likes wet, sunny areas; narrow leaves, pink flowers | A. incarnata |
|
Whorled Milkweed | Has needle-like leaves like rosemary, flowerheads look like boneset; grows naturally in dry, rocky areas | A. verticillta |
|
Nectar Plants
Rudbeckia hirta (black-eyed Susan) is one of the herbaceous perennials in our waystation garden.
Jill Spencer
In addition to milkweed, waystations must have nectar plants. Nectar plants are flowering plants that produce the food (nectar) Monarch butterflies and other pollinators eat. These may be a mix of perennials, annuals and biennials.
Nectar is a watery concoction with a sugar content anywhere from 3 to 8 percent. In addition to the sugars fructose, glucose and sucrose, nectar contains small amounts of proteins, salts, acids, and essential oils from the plants that produce it. Monarch butterfies and other pollinators need a steady supply of nectar to thrive.
Bee balm is another good herbaceous perennial nectar plant for butterfly gardens. Ours began blooming at the end of May.
Jill Spencer
Snapdragons, which bloom spring and summer when deadheaded, are another good nectar source for Monarchs.
Jill Spencer
To provide a continuous supply of nectar, it's important to have blooming plants in your waystation garden from early spring through early fall.
Our waystation garden had pansies, snapdragons (Antirrhinum majus), hollyhock, bee balm, boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum), cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis), marigolds, speedwell (Veronica) and black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta) to ensure an abundance of continuous blooms.
The milkweed in your waystation will also probably produce flowers.
We grew both tall and short varieties of snapdragons. Our Monarch butterflies tended to prefer the low-growing kind.
Jill Spencer
Roses, devil's walking stick and a butterfly bush are also adjacent to our waystation, and we had two volunteer nectar plants the butterflies enjoyed, rue and dill.
Additionally, a raised herb garden containing lavender, basil, chives, oregano and thyme is about two yards away from one section of our waystation.
Hollyhocks are biennial nectar plants. We grew ours from seed, sowing them in the fall for blooms in the spring.
Jill Spencer
Some Waystation Annuals You Might Grow
| Common Name | Scientific Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
Cosmos | Cosmos bipinnatus | Cosmos is easy to start from seed. It comes in a variety of colors. It's usally about 5 ft. tall but shorter 2-foot varieties are also available. |
Lantana | Lantana camara | Here in Maryland, lantana is an annual. If it's happy, it will grow as big as a bush and develop woody stems by the end of the season. Yellow and orange varieties as well as reddish-pink varieties are available at most greenhouses. |
Marigolds | Tagetes | Marigolds have a pungent aroma and produce nematodes that are good for the soil. They are easy to grow from seed. I sow them in the fall. |
Spider Flower | Cleome spinosa | Spider flower is a tall plant that, if not pruned, will grow to five feet or more. It produces pink, white, or purple flowers and readily self-seeds. |
Zinnia | Zinnia elegans | Cheerful and easy-to-grow from seed, zinnias come in a variety of colors and heights. Their flowers are wide and flat, a good landing pad for butterflies. |
Marigold is one of the few annuals in our waystation.
Jill Spencer
Recommended Reading
Goldenrod is another good nectar plant.
Jill Spencer
How Big Should a Waystation Be?
Monarch Watch also recommends that waystations have at least 100 square feet (combined) of host and nectar plants.
To this end, I expanded our original cutting garden into two 3-foot by 16-foot parallel beds with a gravel walkway between them. I also added additional nectar plants to an adjacent 5-foot by 12-foot bed containing swamp and common milkweed (Asclepia incarnata and A. syriaca).
This fall we're adding another 3-foot by 16-foot bed using the trenching method described below.
A truly effective Monarch Waystation will be at least 100 square feet.
— Monarch Watch
The black granules on the leaves are frass (waste), which caterpillars produce as they feed.
Jill Spencer
What's the Best Location for a Waystation?
Site your waystation in a full sun location. Both milkweed and nectar plants need to receive at least six hours of unfiltered sunlight each day to grow well.
I would also recommend an out-of-the-way location. We placed ours in our backyard behind a fence and away from the street where the county sometimes sprays for mosquitoes.
Some Monarch conservation programs encourage gardeners to turn their regular flowerbeds into waystations by incorporating milkweed into them. I think this is a bad idea for most people for several reasons:
- The waystation is going to get ugly.
Monarch caterpillars are going to strip the milkweed of leaves. They're also going to leave frass behind— in other words, piles and piles of caterpillar poop. Moreover, you'll probably want to allow your waystation to go to seed so that you can collect the seed. Again, this is not particularly pretty.
On the common milkweed above, fourth instar Monarch caterpillars have chewed circular areas in the leaves. They do this to minimize the flow of sap as they feed.
Jill Spencer
2. Another reason to set your waystation apart is because milkweed is an herbaceous perennial with a thick, spreading root system. Plant it one year, and you'll have it again the next year in the same location, as well as several feet away in places you may not want it.
3. Also, you should not use herbicides or pesticides or any other chemicals in or around your waystation. So if you are, for example, growing roses near your waystation, you'll have to be an organic rosarian.
4. Finally, your waystation will attract lots and lots of pollinators, including bees and wasps. Placing it in a bed that gets lots of foot traffic means that you're potentially exposing yourself, your family and your guests to stings.
Growing several types of milkweed in your Monarch waystation is a good idea. Pictured: Butterfly weed in bloom, common milkweed and Mexican milkweed.
Jill Spencer
How to Make New Beds for Your Waystation
To create a dedicated space for our Monarch waystation, we used a method recommended by Laura Mason Ziegler in her books Cool Flowers and The Easy Cut-Flower Garden. It's the same method we used to create the cutting garden that we expanded into our waystation. One of the best aspects of this method is that it practically eliminates weeding.
Clip the grass close and cover it with cardboard or plastic. When the vegetation beneath dies, remove the covering.
Jill Spencer
First, measure off your bed. I made ours 3 feet by 10 feet. Then mow the turf (or whatever's growing where your new bed will be) very short. Next, place heavy cardboard or plastic over the mown area and weight it down. I used cardboard and kept it in place with rocks.
When the vegetation under the cardboard has died, remove the cardboard and shovel off about two inches of the soil. This is a key step because it not only removes the dead roots but also the weed and grass seed in the soil. So that the top layer of soil wouldn't go to waste, I added it to our composter.
After removing the covering, shovel off about two inches of soil.
Jill Spencer
The next step is the most labor intensive: digging a trench in the bed and placing the soil in a wheelbarrow.
Once you've dug the trench, use a pitchfork or some other tool to crack open the subsoil. Next, fill the trench with about 3 inches of compost topped by dry fertilizer. (We used cow manure and dry fish fertilizer.)
The last step is to take the soil you removed earlier and finish filling up the trench.
You'll have some soil left in your wheelbarrow, which you can use to fill holes in your yard or add to your composter.
After filling our trenches, I spent some time over the next few weeks, as weather allowed, breaking up the clods so that the soil was fine and crumbly.
Dig a trench.
Jill Spencer
Fill it with about 3 inches of compost topped by dry fertilizer.
Jill Spencer
Fall is a great time to create a new bed in this manner. You can immediately sow some seeds. For example, I direct sowed marigolds, boneset and hollyhock in the fall. Later, in very early spring, after I chilled the milkweed in the refrigerator, I direct sowed those seeds as well as cardinal flower.
Below, are several types of milkweed seedlings in our prepared beds. (I tried to sow them in separate sections, but it was very windy that day.) You can see that I thinned them (but not much so that the Monarchs would have cover) and mulched to discourage weeds.
I had very little weeding to do throughout the growing season because I'd removed the top layer of soil and mulched. This was a real blessing since weeding would have disturbed the Monarchs.
Thin the milkweed seedlings a little and then mulch around them to discourage weeds.
Jill Spencer
Tropical milkweed has showier blooms than most other types of milkweed.
Jill Spencer
Potential Problems
A milkweed bug feeds on tropical milkweed.
Jill Spencer
If you grow milkweed, you'll attract not only milkweed butterflies but also milkweed bugs, both large and small. It's inevitable.
Large milkweed bugs (Oncopeltus fasciatus) are herbivores that eat milkweed plants, including the seeds. Small milkweed bugs (Lygaeus kalmii) eat milkweed and sometimes other creatures, including Monarch caterpillars.
Removing them, or at least most of them, is as easy as wiping them off with a damp paper towel when they're in their soft-bodied nymph stage.
Try not to kill the small milkweed bugs you find in your garden. Their presence in the ecosystem is important!
— Monarch Joint Venture
You could also leave them alone. Not only are they are fascinating to watch, but they are also part of the little habitat you created when you planted your Monarch waystation.
Monarch Joint Venture (MJV), a partnership of government and civilian organizations dedicated to protecting Monarch migration, recommends inaction. I like that idea, too.
Wonderful Surprises
Swallowtail caterpillar
Jill Spencer
In addition to milkweed bugs, your waystation will attract many pollinators, including butterflies other than the Monarch. This was the first year I'd seen Zebra Swallowtails in our yard. They are gorgeous!
Our waystation also attracted many Eastern Tiger Swallowtails and Black Swallowtails. Dill is one of the host plants for the latter, which deposited eggs on the single volunteer dill plant in our waystation.
A Common Buckeye caterpillar on our snapdragons.
Jill Spencer
Because our waystation contained lots of snapdragons, it also attracted Common Buckeye butterflies. Snapdragons are their host plants.
So along with Monarch caterpillars, we had Swallowtail and Buckeye caterpillars in the garden, all munching away.
And then, late in the season, the waystation exploded with Tussock Moth caterpillars.
Another wonderful surprise.
Milkweed is the host plant for the Milkweed Tussock Moth.
Jill Spencer
The nectar plants in your Monarch waystation will attract other butterflies, like these Tiger Swallowtails, which are feeding on a butterfly bush (Buddleia davidii).
Jill Spencer
© 2019 Jill Spencer
Comments
Jill Spencer (author) from United States on January 24, 2020:
Peggy, if you have any part-shade areas in your garden, I bet you could grow orange milkweed. It's so pretty, and we've had good success growing it in part-shade at one of the gardens where I volunteer. It grows better there than here at home in full shade. The blooms are bigger. Thanks for stopping by! Best, Jill
Jill Spencer (author) from United States on January 24, 2020:
Mel, I'm not sure why I didn't respond to your post. I think we might have been traveling. Having milkweed at the post office is such an awesome thing. 32 is a lot, but you can always share. Thanks so much for commenting! Good luck!
Peggy Woods from Houston, Texas on January 24, 2020:
Your tips on creating a Monarch butterfly waystation garden are so well done. I particularly appreciated the tip about keeping it away from other garden beds. If we had sunnier out-of-the-way spots in our yard, I would definitely like to do this. So much of our yard is shaded. Your photographic skills are amazing!
Jill Spencer (author) from United States on December 19, 2019:
Hi, Audrey. Growing a waystation garden is lots of fun. Like any gardening project, it’s ongoing and rewarding. Hope you do give it a try. Thanks for your kind words. Jill
Audrey Hunt from Pahrump NV on December 18, 2019:
Oh, how I love this informative article about the Monarch waystation. I had no idea something like this could be done. Your photos are marvelous! I would love to try this.