4 Late-Blooming Flowers That Support Migrating Butterflies – Plant Them Now Before Summer Ends & Monarchs Head South

It’s easy to imagine birds migrating - flying in flocks high in the sky, wings beating. But butterflies? Their wings are small, beautiful, and fragile as flower petals. Yet migrate they do…thousands of miles. For example, monarchs in North America travel up to 3,000 miles south each fall to overwinter in central Mexico.

If you want to welcome these wonderful, weary wanderers this fall, it is high time to start installing plants for migrating butterflies. To welcome butterflies into your late-summer and autumn garden, you can plant live potted perennials or late-season starters right now for heavy nectar production before frost.

If you want to provide a feast for butterflies on their way south in the fall, your best bet is to plant nectar-rich, fall-blooming flowers. If you haven’t thought of this until summer, you still have the time. Here are some of the top choices to consider.

1. Butterfly Bush

Is there a butterfly bush (Buddleia spp.) in a neighbor’s garden or a nearby park? It’s the shrub that’s famous for long, honey-scented flower cones that attract bees, hummingbirds, and butterflies.

Visit one in late summer and you’ll see the origins of its common name. Billions of butterflies – or so it seems – flock to the shrub to enjoy the nectar from early August into fall. Planting a butterfly bush is a direct invite to these lovely migrators.

Yours is not likely to be the first butterfly bush that the migrating monarchs get to know. In the North, the shrubs flower a little earlier and monarch butterflies feed on their nectar from early July until they head south.

Plant your butterfly bush in well-draining soil in a full sun location. It needs at least 8 hours a day of sun to stay blooming strong. These bushes are hardy in USDA zones 5-9. Some cultivars will grow knee-high, while others will tower over you.

Explore gorgeous butterfly bushes online from the Home Depot.

2. Mexican Sunflower

Okay, Mexican sunflower (Tithonia rotundifolia) is an annual, but it’s a tall, vibrant, colorful annual that produces brilliant fiery-orange, daisy-like blooms. They are magnets for pollinators like bees, hummingbirds, and butterflies.

This imposing plant can grow to 6 feet (2 m) tall and its vast crop of velvety, daisy-like flowers blooms from midsummer until frost. The plants require little know-how to grow, but they will make your backyard into a fueling station for migrating monarch butterflies.

Plant these fast-growing flowers anywhere. They’ll grow across USDA hardiness zones from 2a to 11b. The open blooms of this plant have such a rich concentration of nectar that they are top of the list for migratory butterflies, helping the annual monarch butterfly migration.

In fact, monarchs rely on Mexican sunflowers to refuel them along the way. The plant is considered an endangered species, so don’t hesitate to bring them into your landscape in a site that gets full sun.

Remember that this Central American native loves heat and grows fast. The stems grow to 5-6 feet (1.5-1.8 m) tall and the flowers sit right at the top. As unfussy as a plant can get, these annuals thrive on neglect and bloom until the first hard frost.

You can buy Mexican sunflowers to grow from seed at Lowe's.

3. Tatarian Aster

Gigantic, tough, yet beautiful, the native perennials known as tatarian asters (Aster tataricus) are perennials, thriving in USDA zones 3-8. This type of aster flowers from late summer to the first frost, offering dense clusters of lavender-blue blooms, providing a just-in-time meal for migrating butterflies. The flowers can also go purple, pink, or white.

Tatarian aster is huge – growing to 6 feet (2 m) tall and half that wide. The flowers appear in late summer and just keep blooming until a frost kills them off. That makes them a late-season feast for butterflies, including the migrating monarchs passing through the garden.

Plant these tall asters in the back of borders to use their height as an advantage, not a challenge. These asters need full sun and good drainage, but otherwise, ask nothing. They are vigorous growers and can spread quickly.

Tatarian asters can be hard to find at the nursery, but you can get them online from Etsy.

4. Purple Coneflower

Purple coneflowers (Echinacea purpurea) are native to North America, and like so many native wildflowers, they are tough, easy-care, and their flowers are beloved by pollinators.

This coneflower grows to 5 feet (2 m) tall and 2 feet (0.6 m) wide, its branches smothered in distinctive daisy-like flowers – think rosy-purple petals circling a spiny orange cone. Blooming is in full swing from midsummer into fall.

Echinacea is hardy in zones 3 to 9. Plant it in a full sun location in a spot with well-drained soil. The migrating butterflies will flock to the spiky core in the center of the flowers.

But that’s not the limit of its benefits to wildlife. The seed heads provide food for goldfinches as other flowers fade and the growing season winds down. Its long bloom time and resilience make it a must-have in my pollinator garden.

You can shop a wide array of echinacea flowers from Wayside Gardens.