Click below to listen to my 2 min. Garden Bite radio show: Butterfly garden renovation
Last year my street was redone. That meant digging out all the plants in my butterfly garden and overwintering them in my vegetable garden.
I replanted them this year and found that I needed to purchase additional plants due to transplant shock and other factors.
I did some other rearranging as well. Moving prairie dropseed to the area, planting seeds of an annual, Partridge Pea, that reseeds each season and finding some other shorter plants to fill out the front of the space.
One thing I’ve noticed this year is the Karl Foerester grasses are shorter than normal. (They’re by the pole) My suspicion is the heat has not been their friend.
I picked up a couple of Hummelo Betony. They grow to about 20 inches tall and wide and carry lavender rose colored flowers on spikes above the green glossy foliage. They flower June into July.
This year I’m not expecting flowers since I planted in mid-July. I also purchased a rudbeckia fulgida called ‘Orange coneflower’. It will grow about 2 feet wide and tall and blooms yellow from June through September.
I’ve added Prairie Smoke and am excited to see what it will look like next year.
THIS year, the asters are coming in and will bloom starting sometime in August. They will continue to show off well into September. These are butterfly and bee magnets.
What I have noticed, that’s surprised me, is that the Japanese beetles seem to enjoy munching the leaves. So, it’s a bucket of soapy water for them! Never use any insecticides on your pollinator plants.