Butterflies are in trouble. Your garden can help.

Conventional wisdom is that if you cultivate host plants, butterflies will come. Take, for example, milkweed. After declining monarch populations began making headlines in the late 1990s, people nationwide planted the orange-and-black-winged pollinator’s “host” plant to give the females a place to lay their eggs, and the caterpillars a source of food. The result: Eastern monarch butterfly populations have shown signs of rebounding, though Western populations have not fared as well, possibly due to triple-digit heat and wildfires destroying their overwintering habitats.