Enticing Butterflies and Hummingbirds (and other flowers)

I love butterflies and for some reason just seeing flowers has always made me happy, so when we bought this farm I decided that I would add a little bit of floral delight each year. I know it's not about gardening, per se, but attracting pollinators is as important to me as growing food, so I'm going to share.



This is the butterfly garden I mentioned in my previous post; the one that's over the animal cemetary.



Another view of the butterfly garden.



Some daisy-type plants I put in a couple of years ago. They were standing tall under they got beaten down by rain. Even growing along the ground they're still going strong.






Last year I bought a single monarda plant that I thought was Jack Kline (which is red), but turned out to be Raspberry Sorbet (which is hot pink). The plant had one flower stalk with a gorgeous single flower when I put it in, but this year it came back with a half-dozen gorgeous flowers! I went to the feed store about a month ago and they had red, pink, and white monarda so I bought a pink one and a white one, thinking the one I had was red. When I realized my mistake I planted the new pink one with the one that was already there, put the white one between two of the butterfly bushes, and returned and bought two red one, which I put between two different butterfly bushes. Unfortunately the red one had already flowered so I don't have a picture of how pretty the red ones are. Oh well, next year!









Last year I bought a bag of Butterfly/Hummingbird seeds and planted them, and some came up again this year! I also bought a couple of random plants (the names of which I can't recall, so if you know the name, please let me know!) and put them in because the tag said butterflies liked them.



These are two astilbe plants that were in pots for months after I bought them and appeared quite dead, but I put them in the ground anyway and they bounced back! They're beside the driveway so when they flower I'll be able to see them clearly.



This is sweet basil that I planted two or three years ago in a planter beside the driveway and it keeps coming up. The butterflies love it. I'm afraid to plant it in the ground because I suspect it'll take everything over, but I'm looking around the yard and figuring out where I don't mind of something takes over, such as along the edges of the property, thinking that I'll plant such things there.

I'm going to put the butterfly bush pictures in a separate post because there's quite a few of them.

When we bought this farm 5 years ago there was a newly planted patch of irises beside the driveway that bloomed so beautifully; they were lavender and there were a few tulips and gladiolas mixed in. Sadly, we were too caught up in other things to pay much attention to it and in the last two years blackberries have seriously taken it over. I'm thinking that this fall I need to move the irises, because they're going to get choked out completely before long.