Butterflies from my Deck Container Garden

Hi All,

I posted a few of these images in the daily thread, but I wanted to share them here. I hope that is okay. This is the second year for my deck container garden. So far, I have attracted loads of Eastern Tiger Swallow Tails, Black Swallowtails, Skippers, American Lady, Great Spangled Fritillary and a few Monarchs. My HOA limits the types of plants I can have around my deck, but I managed to grow a few milkweeds under the deck and I have a small plant growing on the deck. BTW, I managed to squeeze 27 planters on my 12 x 18 deck along with planters for veggies too. The planters range in size from about 4 quart to 44 quart pots. My neighbors love the color the butterflies. They're not even complaining about the bees!! I also have two humming bird feeders. I had a flat feed but it was really hard to keep clean. I switched to two bottle feeders and the hummers appear to be happy. I thoguht they were leaving the area, but they showed up again today!!

TST

My lonely Monarch. I haven't seen any for about a week. Hopefully more will find my deck and my front porch. I also have a large rectangular planter of verbena. It smells heavenly!!

Black Swallowtail.

American Lady??

One more, Great Spangled Fritillary??

Pretty...I love all the fritillaries but I only see the Gulf Frit in my yard. Too far south for most of them here. That's great that you've managed to take a small space and make it into a habitat for wildlife. I can't believe your HOA specifies the types of plants you can have! Most people around here just want to make sure it's trimmed and not overgrown or weedy-looking. As long as those bees aren't Africanized, remind everyone that they wouldn't be able to eat a lot of the fruit they enjoy if there weren't bees to pollinate the plants. Everything has its place (mine is in the garden!).

Melanie

Great photos Crystal!

All beautiful, especially the American Lady!

Dunno about the GS Frit, I have a hard time distinguishing the GS from the Aphrodite Frit.

Your HOA controls the plants in the back yard?

Hi Melanie and fly_girl,

Thank you for the feedback. My townhouse is an end unit facing the woods so they are specific about the plants around my porch and down the hill leading to the back yards and decks. I have some type of milkweed growing under the deck and that is okay, but I can't have a bunch of milkweed growing alongside of the house. It's okay, because I put some in pots on my deck!! :) I discovered that it is very difficult to transplant. I found a few plants growing alongside my office building and I rescued them before the ground crew dug them up. Two plants survived, but there probably aren't enough leaves to feed hungry cats. Perhaps I'll have better luck next year!!

I can't tell the frits apart either and I have loads of books. I haven't seen any of the GFs in our area. I envy the variety of butterflies you have in Texas. I would have to visit the Butterfly Conservatory at Brookside Gardens to see that many species!

Chrystall--I love your pics and I'm so impressed that you can garner so many different butterflies from your container garden plants. I would like to know more about what you planted in the containers....?

Here's kind of a neat site to compare different kinds of butterflies. It does indeed look like yours is a great spangled frit!

http://www.naba.org/chapters/nabambc/frames-2species.asp?sp1=Speyeria-cybele&sp2=Speyeria-aphrodite

Great pics Crystall. I don't have that many BF's in my whole yard at one time and I have tons of plants. You have obviously made a great place for them to flock to. Great job, great pics and thanks for sharing. You have some beauties there.

Leslie

Hi tabasco and lostintexas!!

Sorry for the slow response, been on vacation in VA for a week. I have had so much fun this year that I am planning to evict my husband's vegetable containers (green beans, cucumbers, beef steak tomatoes, jalapenos and green peppers) and replace them with more host and nectar plants. Okay, so here is a list of my second year container garden plants (all of these plants were potted in 4 to 44 quart containers):

lantana (yellow-red and yellow-magenta)
pentas (red, magenta, and violet)
blanket flowers
coneflowers (purple, orange meadowbrite, yellow meadowbrite, and red sun)
miniature dahlias (white, red, yellow with red, yellow, purple, orange, and pink)
cactus dahlia? (pink with yellow - eaten by ground hog, currently growing back and deep red with slight yellow centers)
heliotrope (purple)
bee balm (burgundy)
flowering maple (red and yellow)
gazinas (variety of colors)
butterfly bushes (deep purple and lilac) with coreopsis (tick seed, yellow), planted them together in large pots
red passion vine (Lady Margaret)
zinnias (orange, yellow, and magenta) mixed with coneflowers, passion vine and star gazer lilies (pink, white, bright orange, and yellow with burgundy)
stokes asters
cosmos (magenta and white)
sunflowers (red)
four o'clocks (yellow)
salvia (red)
butterfly weed (orange)
milkweed (color unknown, not in bloom yet)

Front Porch and yard:
verbena (red, purple and white)
gerber daisies
miniature zinnias (yellow and pink)
gazinas (variety of colors)
stone crop
hens and chicks
hydrangeas

Phew!! I also have two humming bird feeders and one gold finch feeder hanging on the deck. Unfortunately, I had to take down my song bird feeders (just until I can find a better location).

Here is a photo taken earlier in the summer before I had everything transplanted. I think I purchased (and repotted) several more seedlings after this photo was taken. I also have a portable greenhouse on my deck. I used it to start or mainain seedlings until they were ready to transplant. Winter 2006-2007 was very harsh, so I had to wait until May 15th before I could really work with my plants:

Hi tabasco,

Thank you for the really cool link. I bookmarked that page. It's going to come in really handy next year. Looks like I will only have skippers, swallowtails and a few monarchs for the rest of the year. I haven't seen any 'Ladies' or 'frits' for several weeks. It's okay, though, I am already designing next year's garden!!

WOW, you got some great shots; seems to me they always take off if I attempt to get close enough to photo except when releasing.

Your deck looks really nice, Crystall. Love your BF pictures. : )
~Lucy

Hi jamlover and Lucy,

Thank you so much for the feedback. The butterflies were flighty at first, and the BSTs are more difficult to photograph than the ESTs. I try to spend early Saturday mornings pinching and pruning the plants in my garden. After a while the BFs flutter around me, especially the skippers, they seem to play tag around my head as I prune. Even the hummers ignore me after a while. I also try to keep my camera ready and slowly position it towards a BF when they are feeding. Generally, I can get the shot, or I just sit back and wait... butterfly bushes are a great distraction tool. I can usually catch them in action as they tumble around the blooms.

That's quite an extensive list of nectar and host plants for containers!

I am trying to create some attractive butterfly nectar plant combinations for containers. (for my daughter's place.)

For the space I am thinking of we can have just one or two large pots (about 24 inches in diameter) and a large window box. Now I am trying to identify the plants that are most popular with our butterflies that bloom together at a certain time (when our butterflies are here) that will look very attractive in the two containers.... mmm....any ideas?

Hi,

I tried a few combinations this year with mixed results:

I combined blanket flowers with lantana (2 colors). It was pretty at first, but it really didn't work as the lantana is now choking the blanket flowers.. I also combined zinnias with my red passion vine. It was very pretty and full for about two months. The passion vine is now several feet long and has choked most of the zinnias. I used a pyramid-shaped trellis in a 44 quart pot. The effect was full and colorful. I might try it again, but I will be more careful with placement of the seedlings and shaping the passion vine:

I also combined miniature dahlias with taller perennials like cone flowers and flower maple. Both combinations were successful, but watering was a little tricky.

I think my most successful combination for a larger pot was butterfly bush with tick seed. The purple/yellow combination is beautiful and tick seed will bloom all summer.

Perfect suggestions! Thank you. I will make some notes and add them to my journal!

The tickseed with the butterfly bush sounds especially good.

A few weeks ago I purchased a couple of "dwarf" butterfly bushes--thinking they would be good for containers--they are blooming now but I'm not sure the butterflies like them! They like the bigger ones though, for sure.