New Swallowtail!!

I left home with a chrysalis on the counter and came home to...

Butterfly Garden - List of Plants - Zone 7

Here is a list of the plants currently in my butterfly garden:

• Butterfly bush (white)
• Bee balm
• Aster
• Salvia (variety)
• Marigolds
• Cosmos
• Hyssop
• Flat leaf parsley
• Dill
• Yarrow (yellow & peach)
• Confederate jasmine
• Lantana
• Verbena (tall leggy & purple)
• Coreopsis
• Climbing hydrangea (not doing well)
• Unknown shrubs (2)

I have noticed this year that the butterflies spend a lot of time in the tops of my photinia's and white pine. I think they like the dense canopy.

Butterfly's in the Garden!

I am so excited about and proud of my butterfly garden!  Here are a few of the visitors I've managed to capture on film this year.

Monarch on Buddlea (Butterfly Bush)

Horace's Duskywing Skipper on Salvia leaf

Lola & the Swallowtail (perched on cosmos)

Grey Hairstreak on purple Verbena

Green Lynx Spider at home on a Cosmo plant

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail on Butterfly Bush

The Madness of Oak leaf Hydrangea's!

Oak leaf hydrangea's, Maple, cast iron plants

My big Labor Day 2010 project was to plant 3 Oak leaf hydrangea's.  Under a 60 year old Maple tree of unknown variety.  Hence, the "madness!"

I knew it was going to be a tough dig.  What I didn't know was that it wasn't going to be so much of a dig as a hack at the teeny spaces between the giant roots, curse, take a deep breathe, remember that I love gardening, hack...repeat.  Eventually, I found three decent spots under the tree which were not anywhere near where my landscape plan showed planting the oak leafs, but that's ok.  They are in and I think they look fantastic.

I also dug up and divided some cast iron plants and pocket planted them amongst the hydrangea's and along the slope behind the Maple.  I relocated a coral bell and painted fern that were not happy elsewhere in the garden.  After watering everything in, I sat down with a big glass of ice cold water and enjoyed the view.