Hummingbird and Butterfly Gardening: Melanie's Fabulous Butterfly Weekend, 0 by mellielong

mellielong wrote:
I don't want to be a thread hog over in the Daily thread so I figured I would just direct everyone here.

On Saturday I went to work on one of the flower beds at the front of our street. The end of summer in Florida is kind of like the end of winter in other places. Everything is dried up and dead and it's time to clear everything out for fall planting. I had bought a lot of butterfly-friendly plants. You see, I take care of the front of our street, mostly because we live on one of the corners and no one else does it. I'm thinking on my side (which is shaded by a huge oak) of planting mostly host plants. On the other side, which is in full sun, I want to plant a lot of nectar plants. So last weekend I focused on the full sun side. I planted jatropha, pentas, porterweed, sage, Stokes' aster, and milkweed. I also have echinacea and blanket flowers already growing there.


Fall is a great time for butterflies in FL and I proved it with all the species I saw. Here's the first one - our state butterfly, the Zebra Longwing.