Garden Experiments
For the love of gardening and wildlife habitat
Using plants, garden features, and gardening practices that create and encourage wildlife habitat in your backyard garden can make your yard a haven for wildlife. You'll see more bees and butterflies, hummingbirds, small mammals, and even frogs and turtles. I find joy in watching these creatures in my garden and I hope you will too.
These orange, black, and silver-spotted beauties have been in my garden a lot this summer. I've seen Gulf fritillary butterflies (Agraulis vanillae) feeding at the black and blue salvia, the pineapple sage, and some of the other flowers in my garden. Caterpillar Host Plants The hatching of their eggs was announced by the complete …
Continue Reading about Making a Home for Gulf Fritillary Butterflies in My Garden
Butterflies and bees love coneflowers in the genus Echinacea. You are probably familiar with purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea), but many cultivars are now available in various colors: red, pink, white, orange, yellow, cream, green, and gold. There are even Echinacea flowers with double blooms. Natives vs Cultivars Echinacea is native …
Continue Reading about Echinacea species – Flowering plants for bees, butterflies, and birds
If you like butterflies, than planting both plants that host the larvae and feed the butterflies are important. These are some of the flowering herbaceous plants (and one vine) suitable for planting in the southeast for the butterflies that we have here. Flowering plants that are host to larvae of the butterfly Flowering plants that provide …
Continue Reading about Food Plants for Butterflies and Caterpillars
Salvia is definitely one of my favorite garden plant genera. There are just so many colors and shapes to choose from when picking a plant for your garden. It's a great pollinator plant - butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds love the flowers. Here are some of my favorites from my garden. All salvias mentioned below are perennial in my zone …
Continue Reading about Salvia Flowers Attract Butterflies and Hummingbirds
If you want to add some color to your winter garden and provide food and shelter for songbirds and other wildlife simultaneously, American Holly (Ilex opaca) is a good choice. The berries form in October and persist throughout the winter when many other food sources are gone. Its leaves are evergreen and form a dense canopy. The bright red …
Continue Reading about Plant American Holly for Winter Color and Wildlife Food
For me, half of the fun of having a garden is watching the critters that come to enjoy it. Here are some of the critters that have shown up in my garden (and my family's garden) in the last couple of years. Learn more about backyard habitat by reading these articles Food plants for caterpillars and butterflies How to Create Good Wildlife …
Continue Reading about Backyard Wildlife: The Critters in My Garden
