Flower Gardening Tip at Gardening tips

Welcome to Gardening tips

Article

Copyright � 2005 Jane Lake All Rights Reserved

Butterfly gardening is not only a joy, it is one way that you can help restore declining butterfly populations. Simply adding a few new plants to your backyard may attract dozens of different butterflies, according to landscape designers at the University of Guelph.

Butterflies, like honeybees, are excellent pollinators and will help increase your flower, fruit and vegetable production if you provide them with a variety of flowers and shrubs. They are also beautiful to watch, and are sometimes called "flowers on the wing."

- Begin by seeding part of your yard with a wildflower or butterfly seed mix, available through seed catalogues and garden centers. Wildflowers are a good food source for butterflies and their caterpillars.

- Choose simple flowers over double hybrids. They offer an easy-to-reach nectar source.

- Provide a broad range of flower colors. Some butterflies like oranges, reds and yellows while others are drawn toward white, purple or blue flowers.

- Arrange wildflowers and cultivated plants in clumps to make it easier for butterflies to identify them as a source of nectar.

- If caterpillars are destroying favorite plants, transfer them by hand to another food source. Avoid the use of pesticides, which can kill butterflies and other beneficial insects.

- Some common caterpillar food sources are asters, borage, chickweed, clover, crabgrass, hollyhocks, lupines, mallows, marigold, milkweed or butterfly weed, nasturtium, parsley,
pearly everlasting, ragweed, spicebush, thistle, violets and wisteria. Caterpillars also thrive on trees such as ash, birch, black locust, elm and oak.

- Annual nectar plants include ageratum, alyssum, candy tuft, dill, cosmos, pinks, pin cushion flower, verbena and zinnia.

- Common perennial nectar plants include chives, onions, pearly
everlasting, chamomile, butterfly weed, milkweeds, daisies, thistles, purple coneflower, sea holly, blanket flower,
lavender, marjoram, mints, moss phlox, sage, stonecrops, goldenrod, dandelion and valerian.

Remember that butterflies are cold-blooded insects that bask in the sun to warm their wings for flight and to orient themselves. They also need shelter from the wind, a source of
water, and partly shady areas provided by trees and shrubs.

About the Author

Jane Lake's work has appeared in Canadian Living, You and Modern Woman magazines. To make your own butterfly feeders, read her article, Butterfly Food or visit her Nature Crafts section for more nature articles, including how to make nectar for hummingbirds, plus more on butterfly gardens.

Flower Gardening Tip Best products

Flower Gardening Tip News

flower gardening tip

I am a little ashamed to say - as a gardener - that I'm ignorant about shrubs. I'm impatient and like things that quickly fill their space, flower for months at a stretch and go for the full-on performance rather than the background chorus effect. I ...

Hydrangeas: Autumn glory - Daily Telegraph

Now that the leaves are cleaned out of our flower beds, it's time to get ready for sprucing them up. One of my favorite gardening tasks is edging. For one thing, it's good exercise. For another, there's immediate gratification for a job well-done ...

Leading the Edge - WRAL

Walt Fisher holds a paperwhite bulb ready to be forced to bloom in a glass container at his Bryn Mawr, Penn., home. And you thought gardening was for gentle souls. What about forcing bulbs to bloom when they're trying to sleep? In the case of ...

A 'force' of nature: paperwhites and amaryllis - Monterey County Herald

A member of the acanthus family, Strobilanthes wallichii (formerly S. atropurpurea) looks more like a salvia with its funnel-shaped, indigo-blue flowers and soft foliage. It always looks especially handsome in the crystal light of autumn, shining out ...

How to grow: Strobilanthes wallichii - Daily Telegraph

Gardening Gloves - WRAL

Saturday, October 25, 2008 A: If your shade cloth structure has made it impossible for bees to reach the plants underneath, it should not cause a difference in your green bean crop. Bean flowers are self-pollinated - no bees are required to form ...

The buzz on pollinating strawberries and beans - San Francisco Gate

Nancy Szerlag: Gardening There are a few tricks to overwintering hydrangeas When inverted over the shrub, a large, light-gray, plastic garbage can with its bottom cut off makes a great winter cubby. Choose light gray because black or dark-green ...

There are a few tricks to overwintering hydrangeas - Detroit News

For some of my favorite off-the-wall celebrations like Leif Erikson Day, Talk Like a Pirate Day and National High Five Day, my friends and I have often commemorated by chowing down on large, delicious quantities of Pizookie and exchanging gifts of ...

Brink of Bionic Botany - Daily Californian

Golden Celebration roses can be used as hedges, keeping unwanted traffic out of your yard. ( Photo courtesy of David Austin Roses ) There's no need to fumigate your roses with all sorts of potentially harmful chemicals. To keep yourself and the ...

Grow roses naturally - Hampton Roads Daily Press

When spring crocus pop up, winter is on the way out. Cheerful little crocus have jolly flower colors: purple, yellow, blue, white, lavender and even striped. Plant crocus bulbs in fall to bloom in spring. They readily naturalize and multiply over the ...

Gardening tips

Flower Gardening Tip Section