What Butterflies Want

Joe Pye Weed 'Little Joe' (eupatorium dubium)

Fluttering and floating—the garden is full of life with butterflies. It's a delightful experience to walk through a garden and be brushed on the cheek by soft wings. Although I'm using swallowtails for my photos, there are many more varieties in the garden.

For a butterfly garden, success is guaranteed if you include agastache, cosmos, joe pye weed, milkweed, butterfly bushes, lantana, salvia and zinnias. There are many other nectar and host plants for butterflies, but these are the favorites in my garden.

Agastache 'Blue Fortune' is a favorite, attracting
many butterflies as well as Gold Finches and bees.

Agastache 'Cotton Candy' is proving
to be as popular as 'Blue Fortune' with me and
the butterflies!

Agastache 'Heat Wave', with tubular blooms
is also loved by hummingbirds.

Bog sage (salvia uliginosa) is great for
moist areas in the garden, but can handle drought.
Another hummingbird favorite, too.

Butterfly bush 'Honeycomb' (buddleia)
is one of twenty in my garden. 'Adonis Blue', 'Pink Delight'
and 'Royal Red' buddleia are also wonderful.

Comos sulphureus, an annual grown from seeds.
I also grow cosmos bipinnatus in pink, white and deep rose.

Lantana, an unknown pink-yellow variety that is
a perennial in my zone 7b garden. I also grow the orange-gold 'Miss Huff'.

Benary's Giant Zinnia in salmon. Easy to grow from seed.
I have many different colors of zinnias and the
salmon looks great with lime green blooms.

My bronze butterfly marks a patch of pink swamp milkweed,
joe pye weed and ironweed.
Milkweed is the host plant for Monarch butterflies.

Words and photos by Freda Cameron, Defining Your Home, Garden and Travel. Deer and rabbit resistance varies based upon the animal population and availability of food. All company or product or patented names mentioned are registered trademarks, copyrights, or patents owned by those respective companies or persons.

Favorite Combination: Blue Salvia and Yellow Coreopsis

Coreopsis Big Bang™ 'Redshift'
and salvia farinacea 'Victoria Blue'

Blue and yellow blooms partner well for a delightful color combination, especially in the heat of the summer. Finding the right shades can be a challenge. Many yellow flowers look gold and many blue flowers look purple. This section of my garden was another makeover in the fall of 2009. I rearranged plants and added a few new ones.

Coreopsis Big Bang™ 'Redshift'
begins blooming in July

At the "core" of my yellow, blue and burgundy garden area is Coreopsis Big Bang™ 'Redshift'. I adore this tall, hardy coreopsis. It begins blooming in midsummer for my zone 7b garden, but it doesn't stop until after a few frosts.

'Redshift' starts out a lovely butter yellow with a burgundy eye. As the weather cools in autumn, the burgundy slowly bleeds into the yellow for a peach-yellow to burgundy bloom. I like the shifting colors, but the fresh yellow blooms are at their loveliest right now.

I purchased gallon pots of this coreopsis in 2009 to skip ahead to a mature mass planting. Sometimes, I have no patience! I bought all that the nursery had at the time (four pots), but there are so many blooms, I ignored the "plant in odd numbers" rule. I planted all four in a square that looks like one big mass of yellow when in bloom.

Grow this coreopsis in zones 4-8 in full sun and well-drained soil. My plants are easily 36" high. This coreopsis almost resented the supplemental water that I provided during the worst of the dry heatwave this summer. Tough perennial! There has been no deer or bunny browsing.

I really wanted to use salvia guaranitica 'Black & Blue' as a companion. I grow so many clumps of this salvia and had planned to transplant, but they emerged so late (almost June), that I lost patience (and hope), purchasing salvia 'Victoria Blue' instead. I have now marked a large clump of 'Black & Blue' to divide in the cottage garden to transplant in spring 2011.

I also added a salvia guaranitica 'Omaha Gold' behind the coreopsis. That one has variegated foliage and dark blue blooms, but it isn't large enough at this point to be noticeable. I bought only one 'Omaha Gold' until I see if it overwinters.

Salvia farinacea 'Victoria Blue'

Back to 'Victoria Blue'. I will never be without this salvia again! Although it may not overwinter here since it is rated for zones 7b-11, I have a good source from a greenhouse grower where I can buy it in large flats at a great price. It took this salvia awhile (June) to start blooming since I purchased small plants.

Although the deer and rabbits haven't eaten any of the blooms, some gardeners report that it may be munched when food is scarce.

'Victoria Blue' is a great height (18 inches) to use in front of taller perennials. My advice is to plant the salvia close together, about 6-8 inches apart for the best look. They don't seem to mind, and the results are far better than the recommended spacing of 12 inches.

If you are inclined to add burgundy to the color scheme, I'm using purple fountain grass and gaillardia 'Burgundy'. The gaillardia is unfortunately planted in the shade of the coreopsis! I am going to have to do some rearranging to get more blooms on the gaillardia. The fountain grass, an annual here, is a fabulous companion. I used just one to try the look and have decided that it is "the" best to go with the coreopsis and salvia, given the midsummer peak blooms that last well into fall.

Note the purple fountain grass on the left side
to add a touch of burgundy. The volunteer orange
cosmos has been pulled after seeing it in this photo!

Words and photos by Freda Cameron, Defining Your Home, Garden and Travel. Deer and rabbit resistance varies based upon the animal population and availability of food. All company or product or patented names mentioned are registered trademarks, copyrights, or patents owned by those respective companies or persons.

Bare Soil to Blooms: The Long View

Taking photos of the garden every month allows me to see what I want to change or keep the same for the next growing season. This is just one of several sections of the deer resistant garden that underwent a complete overhaul during the autumn months of September through November 2009. I did my best to photograph at the same angle each time, but there are some hits and misses in the exact position!

I like cottage gardens and wildflower meadows, so I'm combining the two styles for my own look to suit the conditions.

The garden is planted in a somewhat random layout, but I add groupings on a diagonal because of the approach when walking around the outside of the garden. I use primarily cool colors, though I'm gradually adding a bit of yellow and white to see how it works.

During the summer, the area receives twelve hours of sun, so only plants that are drought-tolerant can handle the heat. All plants must be deer resistant since it is not fenced.

My goal for keeping the garden in color is to use self-sowing spring annuals to fill in the gaps until the perennials blooms. Once the spring annuals are gone, I'm using zinnias and annual grasses as fillers.

By comparing this view at different times through the spring and summer, I am making a list of plant additions, subtractions or placement for my fall tasks.

Nov 1, 2009
Old plants were removed to make room for a new plan.
Edging and a French drain were added in the winter.

June 15, 2010
The camera's diagonal angle perspective for this sequence
is shown with the black arrow. There are other viewing
angles for this garden, but this gives the longest look across
the blooms from the top of the garden down the slope.

May 1, 2010
Perennial blue flax (left) and agastache 'Cotton Candy' (right)
provide color while much of the garden is still foliage

June 1, 2010
Larkspur and bachelor's buttons in multiple colors were easy to
grow from seeds sown in November 2009.

July 1, 2010

Monarda, coneflowers and agastache are the primary perennials

for a summer peak bloom. The larkspur and cornflowers

were pulled as they faded, but a few were left to self-sow.

August 1, 2010
The 'Raspberry Wine' monarda fades and Benary's Wine Zinnias begin
to bloom to keep the wine color. Purple fountain grass plumes are starting.

This has been a difficult year for the garden—a wet winter, a hot and dry April, as well as the hottest summer on record. Still, I am comfortable with the overall success for a first year of blooms.

There is a mass planting of Russian sage, not yet tall enough to make a statement from this camera angle. The zinnias are sparse right now, just beginning to bloom, having been delayed by the lack of rain until recently.

Hidden below the agastache blooms are many young coneflower seedlings that will break up all the spires in 2011. I'm using seeds, when possible, to economize on the cost of mass plantings. Although the color scheme is primarily blue-toned pinks, the white coneflowers and gold rudbeckia are being used sparingly until I decide if I want to add more of those colors.

With a path at the bottom of this garden and the meadow grass at the top, there are other views of this same area that won't fit into one post. Also, by selecting photos taken on the first day of each month, there were blooms missed in this particular photo sequence.

Words and photos by Freda Cameron, Defining Your Home, Garden and Travel. Deer and rabbit resistance varies based upon the animal population and availability of food. All company or product or patented names mentioned are registered trademarks, copyrights, or patents owned by those respective companies or persons.