There are books written on the facets of butterfly gardens and bee keeping, so I won’t try to make this the definitive guide.  In fact, this is really just a quick list of what to add to your garden to attract the pollinators which will multiply the yield of your plants.  Ever see a picture of a tomato plant weighed down by so much fruit that you thought it must have been done in Photoshop?  Well, plants that produce well have to be pollinated well and that starts with the butterflies and the bees (maybe your version included birds.)

Even the most novice gardener tends to know that bees on the plants and flowers is a good thing.  The plant pops out a flower, the bees come wandering through and grab up some pollen, and then they move off to the next flower and do it all over again.  When they do, they move pollen between the  flower’s stamen and pistil and that helps the plant set fruit.  The more flowers are touched by these pollinators, the more fruit the plant will set and that means a bigger harvest.  I’m sure there is a more technical explanation, but really, does it matter?

So what do you plant to attract butterflies?

That depends a lot on your climate zone, but there are a few ways to look at growing for beneficial insects or pollinators like the butterflies and bees.  You could choose to simply plant flowers based on color.  This would be

NECTAR AND HOST PLANTS

Butterflies tend to hang out near one of two plants: ones that produce a tasty snack of nectar, and plants where they will lay eggs.  These are known best as  nectar and host plants.  And, since butterflies can tend to be picky eaters, they often use just a single plant family as a food source for the caterpillars. Prevailing wisdom is to plant both nectar and host plants to draw butterflies into their gardens.

FOOD FOR THE BUTTERFLIES & BEES

Maybe the hardest part of a butterfly garden is to allow the caterpillars to munch on your plants while they grow up.  With the exception of a handful of species, caterpillars don’t tend catastrophically damage to the plants. Take a deep breath and realize that’s why you planted the host plant to begin with.  Why else you have planted milk weed?

What about the Bees?

If you’ve ever been to a store that sells a good selection of honey, you realize that bees are much less selective than butterflies.  While clover and orange blossom honey seems to dominate the shelves of the supermarket, you can find honey made from just about any flowering plant or tree around.  In fact, one of mine and my wife’s favorites is the honey from the mesquite tree. Unlike clover honey that is light and thin, mesquite honey is dark and thick; perfect for simmering pecans in to drizzle over French toast  for a lazy weekend breakfast. I digress.  My point is that bees will make honey from just about any pollen producing flower, and that’s good for your garden.

Choosing Flower Colors for Bees?

Often times this is quite a riddle since bees see in Ultraviolet (UV) light.  Surprisingly, the color red is thought to be unseen by bees which means red flowers are pollinated by other means.  So if you hauled off and planted the most colorful garden you could imagine, the bees might fly right on by and miss it. What a shame.  Believe it or not, bees tend to be drawn to flowers that are good at reflecting UV light.  Flowers that are white or light in color are great bee attractors.  And, if you take the “violet” out of ultraviolet, you very well might have a bee’s favorite color. If the lavender in our front yard is any indication, I’d be planting rows of violet colored flowers if I needed the bees.

Okay, okay!  Shut up and tell me what Bees and Butterflies will like!

Plants for butterflies:

• Butterfly Bush (Buddleia davidii) – The name kinda make you say duh, huh!
• Bee Balm (Monarda didyma)
• Lantana (many varieties available, natives, hybrids, shrubs and creepers)
• Mexican sunflower (Tithonia rotundifolia), annual
• Milk Weed (Asclepias tuberosa)
• Pineapple Sage (Salvia elegans), perennial
• Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea), perennial
• Red Pentas (Pentas lanceolata) Pentas come in a variety of colors, but the red ones seemed most popular with the butterflies I saw.
• Zinnias

Host Plants:

• • Citrus (lemon, orange, satsuma, etc.)
  • Dutchman’s Pipe (Aristolochia spp.)
  • Fennel, Dill, Parsley, or Queen Anne’s Lace
  • Passion Vine (Passiflora incarnata and other species)

Plants for Bees:

• Anise hyssop
• Aster
• Basil
• Chives & Garlic Chives
• Clover
• Cucumber
• Coreopsis
• Lavender
• Marigold
• Melons
• Milkweed
• Oregano
• Sunflower
• thistle
• Thyme

Like I said, bees aren’t all that picky, so as long as you plant a few that they like, you should have a great harvest.

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Sometimes you have a plant that does incredibly well in your yard.  Other time you pick up a plant that you like the look of, but have no idea what it is.  This happened to Liz and I a few months back when we started planting the back yard after the summer heat broke.  We have a pact that we will not plant flowers before October 1st due to the pounding the plants take in those last few dog days of summer.  As you can imagine, we are pretty excited to load up on plant when October arrives and we hit the local nursery the first weekend in October.  There we found this

wonderful specimen that was not labeled but had incredible flowers.  So we loaded up a few in different colors and planted them in some 20 inch terracotta pots that we keep on our back porch.

To say they have gone nut would be an understatement – blooming well right through the mild winter and weathering a couple nights of frost.  So for us, these are certainly keepers, but we have yet to see them back in the nursery.  So I have been harvesting the seeds from what I now know is Nicotiana or Flowering Tobacco.  Who would have guessed…

The Process of Harvesting Seeds

There is nothing all that magical about gathering seeds from your plants. You just need to know what to do and not do, and take your time.  In fact, we have been gathering seeds off the Nicotiana plants for the better part of a month.  Here’s how it works:

1. First, if you are a zealous dead-header, you are literally throwing away your seeds.  Slow down with the dead heading and let the seed pods develop.  With our plants, we tend to start thinking about seeds as we reach the end of the growing season.  If the flowers are starting to slow, it might be the time to cut back on the dead-heading.
2. Once the flowers die off, typically the seed pods will form behind where the flower bud was.  These seed pods need some time to develop so you are best to just leave them alone at this point.
3. Seed pods are ready when they turn brown or are starting to open.  It’s important to monitor them closely or you might loose the seeds to birds or spilling out onto the ground. The latter is not too bad since they very well may germinate the next year if conditions are right.
4. Pluck the seed pods from the plant carefully ensuring you don’t spill the seeds or tear off too much of the plant.  All seeds are different, but the usual approach is to break open the pods and pour the contents into a small envelop.  I like vellum or glassine envelopes from Xpedex.  They are small enough for the seeds to not get lost in, and semi translucent so you can see where the seeds are.  Pour the seeds in the envelop and seal them up.
5. If the seeds are still moist, you most likely picked them too soon. In this case, place the seeds in a paper envelop until they are completely dry. Keep seeds in a dark, dry, cool place until it’s time to plant next year.
6. The last step is to label the seeds.  This may seem so obvious, but proper information is often left off the seed packets.  Besides the variety of the plant, you should include a harvest date, and I like to include any special instructions on the envelop like, “plant in late summer indoors, blooms well all winter. Prefers sun and ample water.”

Experiment with your plants and gather their seeds. You may find that you can sustain many years of gardening without ever setting foot in your local nursery. Not that this is likely, but it’s a nice thought that you can recycle the plants that bring color and joy to your yard.

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