Category — Theme Gardens

When creating a butterfly garden, the possibilities of what to include in your butterfly garden design are endless. Below are some suggestions to help get you started. They are designed to spark the creative process of your mind and get you started on your way to creating a lovely butterfly garden.

Before you even begin your butterfly garden, find out which species of butterflies are in your area. Consider taking an exploratory hike around your location with a butterfly identification book. This may take a little extra time and effort, but the results will be worth it. After you have compiled your list of local butterfly species, be sure to write down in your butterfly garden plan what these particular species of butterflies use for nectar and food plants.

Be sure that your garden is in a location that provides at least six hours of sunlight per day. Butterflies are cold-blooded creatures and therefore do better where they are warm and sheltered.

Wind can be a butterfly’s worst enemy so be sure to have plenty of wind protection in your design. You can plant tall shrubs and other plants in order to create a wind break, but a location that avoids heavy winds is even better.

The best of all would be a butterfly garden placed on the sunny side of your home with windbreaks on both the west and east sides, or wherever the prevailing winds come from in your area. Try and locate your garden close to a window so you can view the butterflies from indoors. Provide seating outside too.

If possible, you could excavate an area and build a stone wall around it. This would create the ideal windbreak for your butterflies. Make gravel pathways around your garden to save walking in mud.

There are many creative ways for constructing a butterfly garden. Take your time to design a garden that you will enjoy and be proud of.

“Kiss of the sun for pardon.
Song of the birds for mirth.
You’re closer to God’s heart in a garden
than any place else on earth.”
– Dorothy Frances Gurney

It’s an oft-quoted (and misquoted! I had to look it up for the exact words) poem. Dorothy Frances Gurney expressed the way that most people feel about their gardens. It is in the garden that we feel the touch of the Divine more than anywhere else. It is the reason that throughout the world, men and women have put aside careers to become gardeners, planters and farmers.

There is more to it than the kiss of the sun and the song of the birds, though. When you garden, you find yourself becoming attuned to the natural rhythms of the earth – the pull of the moon, the promise of the rain, the life-giving warmth of the sun. You find yourself rising early to pluck a few berries with the dew still on them. After dinner, you retire to the garden – not because it needs you, but because you need it.

A true gardener’s garden is never finished. It is a work in progress throughout its life. However beautiful or simple it may be, it never has a sterile ‘landscaped’ feel to it. One can sense the changing of the season from day to day – even from hour to hour. In that light, there is no ‘plan’ for a serenity garden. It is one that simply grows as you do, changing to reflect your favorite colors, the landscapes that make you feel comfortable, the philosophy that brings you peace and comfort this month or this year.

With that said, then, take the rest of this with a grain of salt, and adjust it to your own tastes and pleasures. These are ingredients that go into making the perfect garden for me – your mileage may vary.

Rocks – whether they edge a path, line a walkway, or form the basis for a rock garden, stones and rocks are an integral part of the earth. I know that most gardeners consider them anathema, and will root out every last pebble in the interests of providing ‘good soil’. To me, a garden can not be a garden without rocks. I use them to build raised beds, plant shade-loving ground covers beneath the overhang of large boulders, and embed them in the earth to form pathways between rows of shrubs and flowers.

Water – The sound of running water is like balm to a worried mind. If you’re lucky enough to be able to build a backyard pond, you have my everlasting envy. For the rest of us, there are garden hoses and sprinklers to bring water into the garden. Watering time is easily my favorite time of the day.

A Nearby Bench – Enjoying your garden is the reward for your labor. Whether your ‘bench’ is a large boulder or your back porch, be sure there is somewhere to sit close by so you can bask in the scent of earth and growing things.

Present a flower to a child and watch what he does. Nine times out of ten, the very first thing will be to bury his nose in the center and take a healthy sniff. One of the most enchanting things about gardens are their fragrances – yet many of our modern flower varieties have had the scent bred right out of them.

To me, spring smells like lilacs, and a summer afternoon should be scented with the tang of growing tomatoes. Romance is the nearly cloying sweetness of gardenia drifting on the breeze on a summer night, and nothing says autumn quite so clearly as the crisp scent of apples in the orchard. In these days of artificial flavors and aromas, a garden grown specifically to appeal to the nose is a curiously enticing idea.

You can create a garden that perfumes the air throughout the year by choosing fragrant plants that bloom during different seasons. Keep these principles in mind:

Choose plants that will bloom in sequence, and avoid too many plants that bloom at the same time. You want to enjoy each plant for itself, not part of a melange.
Plant fragrant ground covers along paths and walkways. The passage of feet will stir and lift the scent.
Plant fragrant herbs and flowers in window boxes and containers near benches so that you can enjoy their scents easily.
Train vines like wisteria and honeysuckle to grow over fences and arbors so that their scent is stirred by passing breezes.
Make note of the usual prevailing winds. If the wind often blows from the east, then it will carry the scent of a fragrance garden planted east of the house toward the house itself.

My own nose garden starts in mid-spring when the lilacs bloom. A single bush in the corner of the yard perfumes the entire neighborhood with its sweet, heady scent. Just as its blooms are fading, the roses take over.

Old fashioned, antique and English roses are considered to be among the most fragrant of flowers, and I can testify to that. One spring I was haunted by the fragrance of roses that seemed to hang over the entire neighborhood – despite the absence of a single visible rose bush. The source was an antique 4-petal rose that had taken over the back of an abandoned, overgrown lot. I transplanted several canes of it to my own yard, and have carried them with me wherever I move.

The roses bloom through late June, and often again in late October if the weather stays warm enough. Between their blooming, there are gardenia, honeysuckle, mints, verbena and lavender to please the senses.

Other fragrant plants that you can choose for your own garden include magnolia, citrus plants, box hedges, myrtle, John F. Kennedy and Heritage roses, jasmine, clematis and wisteria. There’s nothing like the fragrance of a garden in full bloom. You owe it to yourself to enjoy it.

“Mommy, come see! There are fairies in the garden!”

And so they might have been to the eyes of a five year old who grew up on tales of pixies, elves and fairies. The magical visitor this time, though, was a ruby-throated hummingbird. Hummingbirds have a unique ability to hover in one place by rapidly fluttering their tiny wings which may truly have made them the ‘fairies’ that many people saw hovering around brightly colored flowers.

It’s not difficult to create a garden that will attract hummingbirds, but if you’d like to build a habitat in which they will happily nest and live throughout the northern summer, you need to provide them with more than a sugar-water feeder and a plant or two. An active hummingbird garden doesn’t need to be large, but it will have all of the following key ingredients to attract and keep the attention of nature’s fairies.

Choose nectar producing plants that bloom at different times throughout the spring, summer and autumn.
Flowers are, of course, the key ingredient in attracting hummingbirds to your garden. The tiny birds feed on nectar that is produced by flowers, and seem particularly attracted to plants with trumpet or tubular bright red and orange flowers. Among their particular favorites, though, are rhododendrons, azaleas and rose of Sharon bushes, so the red trumpet isn’t a hard and fast rule. For northern gardens that attract the ruby-throated hummingbird, choose from the list of plants below, making sure that you choose plants that flower at different times during the blooming season to provide food for them throughout the spring, summer and fall.

Spring Bloomers
Azaleas, rhododendrons and rose of Sharon bushes make a great ‘background’ for hummingbird gardens. They bloom early in the spring and continue blooming through the early summer. Pink and bright red varieties are favored, but hummingbirds love ALL rose of Sharon varieties.

Summer Bloomers
Bleeding hearts and red mountain columbine bloom in the early summer, as do petunias, morning glories, trumpet vines, trumpet honeysuckle, and impatiens, all of which attract hummingbirds. An expanse of shade-dappled impatiens is a powerful attraction for hummingbirds, who are ‘sight’ hunters, finding their feeding grounds by sight.

Autumn Bloomers
Butterfly bush, day lilies, garden phlox, bee-balm and impatiens all will keep hummingbirds returning through the autumn and attract late migrators.

Provide a source of water in the hummingbird garden.
Unlike larger birds, hummingbirds will seldom take advantage of a bird bath or bowl of water. Instead, they relish cool mists. A garden hose with a misting attachment or a small fountain that can be adjusted to a fine mist will keep them happy.

Create vertical space for hummingbirds to perch and nest in your garden.
Hummingbirds need shelter from predators and small branches for perching and resting (yes, yes, they do perch sometimes!). By choosing a few taller bushes or trees, you can provide both.

A few strategically placed hummingbird feeders will offer an easy treat in your hummingbird garden.
There are dozens of commercially designed hummingbird feeders designed to be attractive to the little wanderers. Choose feeders with bright red accents, and a capacity for about 8 ounces of sugar water. Rather than using one large feeder, place 2-4 of them around your garden, out of sight of each other if possible. Hummingbirds are notoriously territorial. By providing several ‘private’ feeding stations, you’ll increase the number of hummingbirds that you attract.