Sitting on my laptop, I can show some pictures. The sunnier bed had no free space, and I planted the borage plant just a meter far from what you see below. I noticed that bees and butterflies love to jump from plant to plant but don't want to spend extra energy reaching it. I have a quite dense planting of annuals, and the perennials give it a structure. My idea is that it looks like a flower bouquet. Most of them are grown from seeds. So much food for 20 quit that last many weeks.
I was really surprised how often bees came to the 1x1m kale/cabbage raised bed like there was a hidden treasure inside the cabbage, and butterflies cling to it.
Most people are surprised how I grow my tomatoes (far to many leaves), but the butterflies sleep in the tomato bed, where it's cosy and they are protected.
These are the butterfly types:
Along the lavender row, there are so many bees, even my friend who has a hearing problem can hear them.
I watched a lovely butterfly, Gatekeeper?, flit about on my patio pots yesterday. It went for the Cosmos, Cleome and a rain daisy. I saw a Peacock one too! Lavender is the most popular, mainly by the white butterflies, if the bees give them room!
I’ve also had a few in my tomato poly house but often can’t see what they are.
Does anyone look up the butterflies on specific plants to see what they need to lay their eggs on. Buddleas in themselves are ok for food but no good for breeding butterflies. Same with annuals which will die in the winter.
Gardening on the wild, windy west side of Dartmoor.
Does anyone look up the butterflies on specific plants to see what they need to lay their eggs on. Buddleas in themselves are ok for food but no good for breeding butterflies. Same with annuals which will die in the winter.
I was reading about this in the week, as it was mentioned on a gardening programme I follow - Garrdio A Mwy (S4C but available on iPlayer with subtitles).
Does anyone look up the butterflies on specific plants to see what they need to lay their eggs on. Buddleas in themselves are ok for food but no good for breeding butterflies. Same with annuals which will die in the winter.
Certainly worth growing if you have a large garden, but I don't, really. I'm sure I get a few more Holly Blues because of my large Hedera helix, but nothing particularly noteworthy compared to general local populations, I think. Then there are things like Stinging Nettle that 4 different species use, but there is so much of it in the wild that the likelihood of them picking a little patch in a garden is rather low.
Always worth trying if one has the space tho, if there's one thing we know about Mother Nature is that she is full of surprises!
What a delightful garden @Simone_in_Wiltshire, thanks for sharing it with us! The comments people are making about tomato plants are interesting, never heard of that before. Echinacea gets mentioned so often in lists of butterfly-friendly plants and seems to be a success for you, but I have grown it for 3 years and failed to get a single butterfly on it! Until yesterday...
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The sunnier bed had no free space, and I planted the borage plant just a meter far from what you see below. I noticed that bees and butterflies love to jump from plant to plant but don't want to spend extra energy reaching it. I have a quite dense planting of annuals, and the perennials give it a structure. My idea is that it looks like a flower bouquet.
Most of them are grown from seeds. So much food for 20 quit that last many weeks.
I was really surprised how often bees came to the 1x1m kale/cabbage raised bed like there was a hidden treasure inside the cabbage, and butterflies cling to it.
Most people are surprised how I grow my tomatoes (far to many leaves), but the butterflies sleep in the tomato bed, where it's cosy and they are protected.
These are the butterfly types:
Along the lavender row, there are so many bees, even my friend who has a hearing problem can hear them.
I ♥ my garden.
Buddleas in themselves are ok for food but no good for breeding butterflies. Same with annuals which will die in the winter.
https://www.cwmnida.cymru/en/portffolio/garddio-a-mwy/
https://www.ukbutterflies.co.uk/foodplants.php
Always worth trying if one has the space tho, if there's one thing we know about Mother Nature is that she is full of surprises!
What a delightful garden @Simone_in_Wiltshire, thanks for sharing it with us! The comments people are making about tomato plants are interesting, never heard of that before. Echinacea gets mentioned so often in lists of butterfly-friendly plants and seems to be a success for you, but I have grown it for 3 years and failed to get a single butterfly on it!