Practical Creation Care: Gardening for Butterflies

Monarchs and Milkweed

The answer is a resounding “no.”1 The vast majority of butterfly and moth (collectively known as lepidoptera) species require very specific plants, called hosts, to feed their caterpillars. Without host plants, there’s no caterpillar food, and therefore, no caterpillars to continue the butterfly’s life cycle.

Nearly everyone is familiar with the specific feeding requirements for the caterpillars of North America’s iconic orange-and-black monarch butterfly: milkweed. While adult butterflies can sip from a wide variety of tempting blooms, the larva can only munch the leaves of plants in the Asclepias, or milkweed, genus. So no milkweed equals no monarchs.

But what many people don’t recognize is that most caterpillars are specialists, just like monarchs. Only a handful of genera, or sometimes a whole family (likely a biblical created kind), feeds one specific variety of caterpillar, and that squiggly creature can’t find food anywhere else.

Squishy, Juicy Baby Bird Food

In our fallen world, caterpillars aren’t just important for turning into enchanting butterflies and moths. They’re a vital food source for baby birds. Nearly every songbird species requires insects to feed their young, and caterpillars—soft, squishy, and packed with fats and proteins—are an ideal choice. To raise just one clutch of eggs to fledging, chickadee parents must collect and feed their young some 7,000 caterpillars!2

If we want to see more butterflies floating on the breeze, moths hovering in our gardens, and birds singing from the boughs, we must support the entire life cycle of a butterfly, including the oft-overlooked caterpillar stage.

Why Should We Care?

Insect populations are currently in significant decline, with insecticides and habitat loss (e.g., loss of native host plants) playing a key role in their diminishing numbers.3 Unsurprisingly, bird numbers have also plummeted, with 1 in 3 birds vanishing since 1970 in the U.S. and Canada, a number that equates to 3 billion birds and most keenly affects grassland species whose habitats aren’t valued ecologically the same way wetland or forest ecosystems are, even though they are just as vital to wildlife.4

But why should we care about disappearing insects and birds? After all, most people aren’t on friendly terms with bugs, hence the popularity of insecticides. A host of practical arguments could be made: many insects are important pollinators; insects form the backbone of the food chain; insects are interesting in their own right, etc. But ultimately, we have more than utilitarian arguments for creation care: We have biblical reasons.

As Christians, we must care for creation because our Creator cares for what he has made and has given us dominion over creation with the charge to tend and keep it.

And God blessed [the man and woman]. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:28)

The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. (Genesis 2:15)

We must care for creation because our Creator cares for what he has made and he’s given us dominion over creation.

God placed Adam in the garden (and then provided Eve as a helpmeet without whom he couldn’t fulfill the dominion mandate) to “work it and keep it.” This implies a level of thoughtful care. The garden wasn’t just to grow wild; rather, it was to be tended and kept. Since the next verse describes Adam and Eve’s God-given diet of plants, context implies they were to work it for food or, more broadly, humanity’s good.

It is in the best interest of human flourishing—in particular, our food supply!—that we protect creation. But we must also carefully tend and keep creation because God delights in it (Psalm 104:26; Matthew 6:30; Matthew 10:29) and has specifically designed the things he’s made to point to himself (Romans 1:20).

Right now, the stewardship movement is being led mostly by secular nature lovers who often want to preserve nature for the wrong reasons, including creation worship or environmental justice. That should not be the case. Having been given a mandate by God to have authority (dominion) over creation—with the attitude of tending and keeping, not exploiting and destroying—Christians should be at the forefront of creation stewardship. We alone have the right worldview to wisely care for creation!

So What Can We Do?

Anyone can support our native butterfly and moth populations by providing host plants in their landscaping (even if that landscaping is a pot on a deck!). But what makes a host plant?

Well, each lepidoptera species has its own specific requirements (see Table 1 for ideas), but generally, you want to plant anything that is native to your area. A native plant is one that has lived in a certain geographical area since the end of the ice age. Natives can include trees, shrubs, grasses, or forbs (herbaceous flowering plants). These native plants and our native animals are well adapted to depend on each other, and introduced, invasive, or cultivated species can’t provide the long list of benefits that natives do (although some can provide food, e.g., carrot leaves will feed black swallowtails).

If you research native plants, you’ll read about “coevolution,” this idea that the flora and fauna have been evolving together for tens of thousands of years. But this isn’t molecules-to-man evolution. God created living things according to their kinds, and it appears he may have created some kinds to interact specifically with other kinds. At the very least, using the genetic variety placed by God in their genome, plants and animals have adapted together to the environmental conditions of a certain area. But nothing new is ever added and there’s no change of kind, both of which are required for molecules-to-man evolution.

The “How To”

Native plants can easily be worked into existing landscaping. My husband and I scraped the mulch out of a side garden and sowed partridge pea seeds one fall. The next spring, bright green shoots popped up everywhere and have continued to do so every year as this beautiful annual, pollinated by bumblebees and hosting clouded sulphur caterpillars, self-seeds prolifically.

Beyond adding natives to your existing gardens, turf grass (lawn grass), which does not support wildlife, can be removed and native grasses and forbs can be planted in its place. This spring, we used a rototiller to churn up (and then rechurn up once the seed bank sprouted) six sections of our lawn, turning them into small native wildflower meadows with paths of grass in between. By the fall, a flush of annuals should be blooming, and within a few years, the deep-rooted perennials will be established, ready to bloom for years to come.

Just next month, a brand-new addition to our Creation Zoo at the Creation Museum will open: the Butterfly House. Seasonally featuring a wide variety of native butterfly and moth species, guests who purchase Butterfly House tickets will be able to enjoy some of God’s handiwork up close as they watch monarchs, red admirals, eastern tiger swallowtails, and so many more lepidoptera flutter around. Our family can’t wait for this new addition to the stunning museum grounds.

It’s a joy to care for creation and, together as a family, to discover new insects, plants, and other creatures on our property. Together, we are taking dominion over the piece of earth we’ve been given to steward and are doing what we can to be faithful to tend and keep it, not merely for nature’s sake but to honor the Creator and point our children and those who visit our home to the one who made and cares for this beautiful world.