Purpose: Will help preserve an essential habitat that butterflies, bees, other pollinators, hummingbirds, and other birds need to survive. With butterfly populations plummeting it is critical to educate and restore habitats where possible.
The goal of this garden is to attract butterflies by planting a variety of native plant species that help sustain plant diversity and attract other beneficial insects and birds to the garden. The garden is an abandoned flower bed that has not seen use for years. It is located near water sources and more established trees and shrubs which will provide natural cover for insects and birds. The plants include a button bush, milkweeds, coneflowers, prairie blazing stars, phlox, coreopsis, rudbeckia, asters, parsley, dill, fennel, etc. These plants provide not only nectar sources for butterflies and pollinators, but also a food source for caterpillars. Lastly, a majority of the plants are perennials which should come back year after year where the garden can hopefully be filled in with annuals in future years.
The project went well. We were able to get donations for plants and seeds and get them started in May so that by July the garden was colorful and full of bees and butterflies.
We learned that butterflies are starting to become scarce and it took until almost August before we saw monarchs so the importance of more gardens and replanting of host plants is critical!
If we did this project again, which we do plan to find more spots in our neighborhood to do so, we would make sure we have more deer resistant plants as the wildlife defintiely ate some of our plants before or during blooming.
The best part about the project was getting the community together and actually seeing the results as well as get compliments on how pretty the flowers turned out!
Other tips and tricks are to start seeds earlier in the year so you can maybe get blooms going in June given the weather got colder earlier this year and zapped the flowers in early fall.
