Butterfly Garden

[3boysmom]

The kids and I planned and planted a large butterfly garden this year and it is so beautiful! This morning I went out with my cup of tea and just stood there watching 7 huge swallowtail butterflies, 3 large black and blue butterflies of some sort, many small buterflies and a hummingbird all swooping from plant to plant, enjoying the morning. I was out there for about 30 minutes and more and more just kept arriving. As I look out there now (afternoon) I can count 5 large butterflies on one plant and three more on another.

This was really a fun project, and it is so eye-catching that it has the neighborhood talking! The great thing is that we did it with mostly perennials so it will just get bigger and better each year!

[steffanie3]

Could you tell me more about what you planted and what exactly you did for the garden?

Thanks,
Stephanie

[3boysmom]

Hey, my name is Stephanie too!

Anyway, we basically just looked at gardening books and at our local garden center and picked out plants listed as buterfly magnets. Almost all of them thrive in full sun.

We have several buddleia in different varieties, and all look lovely and smell nice but the butterflies prefer the Honeycomb variety. That bush is literally covered with butterflies from dawn to dusk!

Bee Balm really draws hummingbirds (and bees) and is a really cool plant!

Anise Hyssop (we have two varieties) is another butterfly fave.

We probably have 40-50 plants out there, but I'll try to remember some more...several varieties of coreopsis, vervain, echinacea, sedum, great blue lobelia, ruby slippers lobelia, garden phlox, babies breath, prairie mallow, false mallow, lavatera, yarrow (several varieties), penstemon, asters, jacobs ladder, bachelor's buttons, caryopteris (great for late season bloom), salvia.

It's also important to have a shallow water source for the butterflies. We have a large saucer (to go under a planter ) that we lined with gravel and cover the gravel with water so the butterflies have a place to land and drink. The birds like it too!

If you try it, please let me know how it goes!

[Chanley]

I would also highly reccomend planting some plants for the larvae to eat.

They seem to LOVE our:

Garden Rue and
Fennel

Ohh and catmint is another one they LOVE plus it blooms NON-STOP all summer.

[steffanie3]

Maybe we can try one next year it just sounds so wonderful to watch and I am sure it is just gorgeous itself. I am going to save your suggestions in a file in Word so I can have the knowledge for later.

Thank you very much,
Stephanie

Oh you have a great name