Do it yourself

How to host butterflies in your back yard:

• Provide milkweed: Milkweed, a diminishing resource due to development, is the single food source for the monarch caterpillar. Monarchs rely on milkweed’s chemical properties to make them unpalatable to predators.

• Asclepias, or common milkweed, also called butterfly weed, is an easy-to-grow perennial that can be found at most independent nurseries either as plants or seed. Mail-order catalogs are another source.

• Grow organic: Butterflies are extremely sensitive to chemicals. Don’t use them in gardens that hosts birds, animals and beneficial insects. Icaza uses only organic fertilizers such as blood and bone meal, lots of compost, and never pesticides or herbicides.

• Be less than neat: Icaza’s garden looks picture-perfect year-round. But as ratty as the milkweed looks by the fall, she doesn’t clean up the plant.

“Around October or November when the milkweed really looks its worst is when the butterflies arrive to lay their eggs,” she said.

The caterpillars eat all parts of the plants, including the leaves and the seedpods.

• Attract adults – get caterpillars: Provide nectar plants for the adults and host plants for the caterpillars. Butterflies with their large and wobbly wingspans visit nectar plants that offer flat landings, such as asters, chrysanthemums, marigolds, lantana, cosmos, pentas and black-eyed Susans.

But monarchs will only lay eggs where there is a source of milkweed for their caterpillars to consume.