Butterfly Gardening with Native Plants: How to Attract and Identify Butterflies

by Christopher Kline

Fun how-to guide for attracting butterflies with native plantsIncludes more than 150 color photographsSuitable for kids and adults Have you ever wanted to draw butterflies to your home, but you haven’t known where to start? This book will help you! Butterfly Gardening with Native Plants is much more than a book filled with beautiful photographs. It brings the butterfly’s perspective to the reader. Living in nature is getting more and more difficult around the planet for butterflies. This makes manmade habitats, filled with native plants, much more important. Butterfly expert Christopher Kline explains how to use native plants and draw butterflies to your home landscape. He discusses butterfly gardening basics, common butterflies int he garden, garden designs, guide to host plants, native nectar, and sources for native plants. Many detailed illustrations on garden layout will make building your own garden much easier. This guide also makes it easy to pick plants that attract different butterfly species. Butterfly Gardening with Native Plants belongs on the bookshelf of anyone who wants to draw butterflies to their home.

Genres: Gardening, Nature, Environment, Nonfiction

182 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 3, 2015

About the author

Christopher Kline lived in the Rim Country of Arizona for ten years where he worked as a school teacher, butterfly researcher, and yes, a U.S. Geological Survey field biologist. Much of his intimate knowledge of the region comes from hiking its many trails, including a sixty mile, five day backpacking trip of the General Crook Trail with his daughter. Kline's interest in writing started in elementary school, with creative writing and science being his favorite subjects. After studying forestry at Northern Arizona University, many of Kline's work assignments placed him in the outdoors. Over the years he journaled about many of his adventures. While Kline still enjoys being in the outdoors, his interests have broadened. He now includes, in addition to his botanical interests, butterflies and dragonflies as his objects of attention, including several county record observations in southeast Ohio. Hostile Lookout is the first in a series of Tony Spencer mysteries. While the characters are strictly fictitious, the author draws from many of his personal experiences hiking and camping in the rugged Rim Country to build this suspenseful tale. Look for the second book in the series, Asclepias, to come out soon.

Reviews

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Informative and clear instructions on re/designing your garden space with pollinators in mind.

Great photos, graphics, and charts that offer species-specific info of insects as well as trees and plants for maximizing butterfly and moth pollinators.

[Brenda Morris · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good book for someone new to gardening, native plants, or butterflies. It's centered on the Ohio River Valley, so it's relevant to gardeners in the eastern half of the US. I enjoyed all the beautiful pictures. I've been gardening with native plants for about 10 years now, so the plant information was pretty familiar, but there are still a few plants I'd like to look up. I was a little disappointed that, despite the title, there were a couple of instances where Kline recommends non-native plants. He does warn against invasive plants; however, I might disagree with him about how beneficial non-native clover is. :) He also mentions crown vetch twice in the book, but only points out its invasiveness in one instance, which is a little concerning since crown vetch is very aggressively invasive. All that said, I learned more about butterflies and their host plants, and I certainly think this book fills a niche.

[Melinda Mayer · Rating 5 out of 5]

No matter your expertise level, I recommend this book.

Very informative. It can also be used as a field guide for many kinds of caterpillars, butterflies, and native plants. I have studied native gardening and gardening for butterflies for years and I still learned a lot from this book.

[Trish Remley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very basic. Simple but clear details of individual butterfly species & corresponding host plants.

[David Parker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very easy read but well formatted and broken down into butterflies, blooming plants and host plants.
It helped expand my knowledge and my wildlife garden.