I want to attract butterflies and hummingbirds. I guess that's pretty obvious considering I'm posting here. ;) If you could offer any suggestions for my climate zone 9 - hot and humid. I'd really appreciate it. (And I do plan on adding hamelia patens.) Any suggestions would be SO greatly appreciated.
Cross posted below:
Anyway, my garden will have a definite Texas/cottage garden/tropical all-in-one look!
The bones of the garden:
White crepe myrtle
Chaste (vitex) tree - purple blooms
Ebbing's silverberry elaeagnus - already pruned to a small "weeping" tree
Two Sweet/tea olives (just three feet high)
Agapanthus - blue-ish purple
Bi-color African irises
Some "Green Ice" mini roses - white
3 small gardenia bushes
2 "airy" shrub plants with burgandy leaves and tiny pink flowers (can't remember the name!)
Nice boulder rocks
A chiminea that looks a hundred years old - a little tex-mex in the garden haha
I'm planning on adding:
Apricot Sprite Agastache
Red Hot Poker Flamenco
Red Salvia
Goldfinger Mexican Sunflower
Arizona Sun Blanket flower
Thanks so much! I love photography, so I hope I have lots of photos to add later. I did grow milkweed last year, and had a blast watching the cats grow!
Jo
This is cross posted from the Texas board: hope that's ok
A little bit more info: I also have a very nice duranta, and I will plant more milkweed and dill.
I'd love a vine, but I don't want anything heavy or invasive, and I just can't seem to figure out what would look good with all the colors I've chosen.
Ooh! Ooh! I had some Goldfinger Mexican sunflowers a few years ago (free with my order). They are so wonderful. I think they're the best of all the Mexican Sunflowers, but "Torch" is the one you always find. The butterflies love them. I always got several "crops", too. I found they went from seed to flower in just over two months, so I could get a lot of them each year. Plus, they only get three or four feet high so they don't go insane. Oh, and my dad liked them, too. They will self sow, but I always thought that was a good thing.
Blanket flowers -also an excellent choice. I haven't tried "Arizona Sun"; I grow "Goblin". They seem pretty similar. My blanket flowers bloom year round, literally. This is their quiet time of year, but I've still got about three of them blooming. They attract butterflies like crazy! And they seem to attract butterflies of all different sizes which is good, and I also see little bumble bees in them quite often.
Red salvia is also a great choice for butterflies and hummingbirds. I only have blue and purple salvia, but they're very popular with the butterflies. It sounds like you're off to a great start. Can't wait to see the pictures!
Melanie
Get some WestTexas Mist flowers (Eupatorium greggii ), I had loads of butterflies with those. : )
My hamelia patens was killed to the ground after our last little freeze. Make sure you cover yours if you have freezes.
~Lucy
The duranta is a wonderful choice...although not native. I have several in my yard and every single butterfly species I've seen has nectared from it. I don't care if it's not native...it works wonders for my yard!!!
The eupatorium greggi is another excellent plant for bringing them in!!!
If you have time please check out our local NABA (North American Butterfly Association) website for south Texas.
http://www.naba.org/chapters/nabast/
Click on the "gardening" link and you can read through our top nectaring and larval plants. Mike Quinn, Austin Entomologist has created a pdf file with excellent choices.
~ Cat
Hi Jo, can't wait to see pics! Here's a couple more.....Glads, Hollyhocks, Shrimp plant, Bird of Paradise, Mustic Spires Salvia, Brugs, Ligularia, Rue, Fennel, Citrus, False sunflower, Coreopsis, Abutilon, Phillipine Violet.....there's a couple for ya! lol There's so many to get that will thrivve in your zone.
You'll love this BF forum, lots of knowledgeable and helpful people, you'll be broke buying bf cages real soon...just like the rest of us!
Welcome aboard!
Rox
Mexican Butterfly Weed at back (straggly legs), but famous for attracting Monarchs (I have them year round), Pachystachys lutea (sometimes called Lollipop Flower - a semi-shrub that is wildly popular with hummers), FireSpike, Salvia mexicana 'tula' (if you can find it), Salvia leucantha, old-fashioned shrimp plant (some have quite lovely russet coloration, others not so much), Russellia (the common red one), Bignonia capreolata 'Tangerine Beauty' - cultivar not at all rampant, Coral Honeysuckle (Lonicera semperviens - try to get the named cultivar 'Alabama Crimson' which is hardier - I lost my native plant to a freeze, but have loved the cultivated version and so do the hummers). Also another tropical looking plant called Justicia carnea or Jacobinia carnea.
Hummers fight over their territorial rights to these plants.
Melanie, I ordered the Goldfinger Mexican sunflower seeds from Park. I think they will be arriving today, in fact.
I also ordered the Arizona Sun blanket flowers from Park. The website says that Arizona Sun is much more uniform in size and leaf size/shape than Goblin, and I like that since its short and will be planted more along the border than the back.
I'm definitely going to have a mix of hybrids and some natives. I had milkweed last year, and it grew so tall. Yikes! I definitely have to rearrange things.
Thanks, everyone!
I got the "Goldfinger" as a bonus from Park years ago! Between that and the blanket flowers, you should get a good deal of bf visitors.
Melanie