Create Your Own Monarch Habitat

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Monarch butterflies are in trouble. The increased use of Roundup (glysophate) weedkiller on crops that are modifed to be “Roundup ready” has led to a devastating loss of habitat for monarchs, whose larvae feed exclusively on the once-common milkweed plant. Roundup is not the only cause of habitat loss; other factors include increased herbicide use in other milkweed habitats. Without milkweed to breed on, and with the loss of other flowering “weeds” for the butterflies to feed on, monarch populations have declined drastically—as much as 90 percent in recent decades in the United States, where they normally migrate between the warmer South and the Midwest and North.

What can you do? Create your own monarch habitat. It’s easy to do. Milkweed is a native species that grows readily in Wisconsin. Adult monarchs also need flowering plants to feed on before and after the milkweeds are in bloom. It’s a matter of two different gardening strategies: “breed” and “feed.” They need milkweeds to breed, and flowering plants that produce nectar to feed.

Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) produces large seed pods that ripen in late summer and begin to burst open in the fall, releasing floating airborne seeds that can travel great distances on the wind, not unlike a dandelion. It gets its name from the milky juice that seeps from the stems and leaves when they’re broken or cut. They can grow almost anywhere there’s plenty of sun—you can find them growing from cracks in cement in urban settings—and are very hardy. Their large pink flowers are extremely fragrant, and the scent carries on the wind, attracting passing monarchs.

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Plant Them and They’ll Grow

While you certainly can use your gardening skills (if you have them) to plant milkweed—fertilizer, prepared beds, and the like—you don’t need to. Plant them and they will grow. They just need plenty of sun. I started my habitat about 10 years ago. All I did was find a milkweed growing in a ditch, take one of the pods in the fall (fall is the best time to plant, but you can also plant in the spring), and place it under the leaf litter in my east/south garden bed, which was planted with perennial flowers. The following spring/summer, I had milkweeds, then monarchs, and forever after, milkweeds and monarchs. With all the seeds released by a single plant, you will always have more plants each year.

The first monarchs usually appear in late spring, and their wings are often tattered from the long migration from Mexico. They are tired and hungry and will feast on any flowers they can find. This is where the “feed” part of the strategy comes in. Plant a variety of flowering plants whose flowering periods range from spring until fall. This will ensure that no matter when monarchs arrive, or emerge, they will have something to feed on. Native plants are a wonderful choice for this, but really, any nectar-producing flower will do, from common weeds like catnip and common thistle to your showy garden flowers. To make things easier, plant perennials that blanket the ground.

The monarch life cycle goes something like this: the female monarch will plant small white eggs, one at a time, on different parts of the plant, mainly the underside of leaves. In about four days, tiny larvae (caterpillars) emerge, and begin voraciously feeding on the plant. They feed on the leaves, but love the flowers, if they are available. They molt through five instars (stages), getting bigger and more colorful with each transition; their coloration is bright yellow, white and black stripes.

In their final instar, they seek an out of the way place and form a chrysalis (pupa), where they metamorphose for about 10 days. They’re generally very well hidden; I almost never find them in my habitat. When they emerge, they'll rest for a bit, gaining their strength, and then flutter off to the nearest flowering plant.

Four Generations, One Season

Monarchs reproduce in four generations in a single season, so the butterflies you nurture today may well come back later to produce their next brood. The first three generations live for two to six weeks. The final generation takes off and flies to hibernate in Mexico or the southern United States in late summer or early fall—but you might meet them again when they fly back the following spring.

Can you raise monarchs indoors? Well sure, but you’ll have to keep feeding them milkweed leaves. It is a fun and educational experience for kids to watch the little larvae grow, form a chrysalis, and then emerge as a beautiful butterfly. You can get quite elaborate with your monarch enclosure. But otherwise, it’s really much better to leave them be outdoors. The only time I bring them inside is when I find milkweeds growing in the lawn with eggs on them (they’re easy to spot), and I need to mow the lawn. I put them in a jar with plenty of leaves, and after they’ve hatched and grown to a decent size, I release them back outside on a milkweed. They do occasionally crawl out (I don’t bother with a lid); in that case you'll find a newborn butterfly fluttering about the house or clinging to the screen window. They’re easy to gently remove and release outside.

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Where to get seeds

There’s much more to learn about monarchs, like “How do you tell a male from a female?” (The males have a little dot on each wing.) But perhaps the most important question is, “Where do I get seeds?” You might be able to find a plant growing in your own yard or in your neighborhood; the seeds pods last well into the next year. But if not, many garden centers and online seed stores carry them, and there are national and community organizations that offer them:

Maintaining your own monarch habitat will help offset the dwindling natural habitat and monarch population, but there are other benefits as well. The experience of having lots of monarchs fluttering around you in your garden is rather nice, and the sweet fragrance of the milkweed blooms will fill your yard and even your house if you have the windows open. But there are some other, perhaps unexpected, benefits as well. You'll find that your habitat will become a tiny ecosystem—milkweeds are native, after all—that attracts many other creatures, most of them native too. Spiders, milkweed beetles, bees and wasps including the threatened honey bee, cicadas, katydids, birds like the goldfinch (which feeds on the milkweed seeds), and other butterflies and moths, like the tussock moth, hummingbird moth, or the swallowtail (which lays its eggs on parsley and dill), will appear in your habitat.

Want to learn more? Here are some national and local resources for monarch butterflies: