Hi I'm Noelle from Petitti garden centers and we're here at our Bainbridge
location and we're going to talk to you about butterfly gardening and plants
that you should put in your garden it's actually a national pollinator week
usually the mid week in June and it's also perennial week so it's just a great
time to get out there and plant in the garden with with butterflies in
particularly you want to plan your garden and select plants where you're
going to have early mid and late bloomers so you can see here on the
table there's a sort Minh of different perennials we have some herbs here - I
have a spiraea shrub behind me as well and so all of those plants as you can
tell there's some foliage right now some flowering and as they go into flowering
phases that really extends this season for butterfly nectar and also for their
host plants so you actually want those two things you want nectar rich plants
and you want host plants as well and I'll talk about that in just a moment so
do think about early mid and late season bloomers and the nectars and the host
plants now some of you probably know that you know flowering plants are great
for the butterflies but the herb family is really really great as far as a host
plant is concerned so if you have herbs like let's say dill chives parsley even
those are great host plants they are good herbs to grow in the garden or in a
container and you can grow them amongst perennials as well and that'll really
attract a lot of your butterflies into the garden the other thing to look at is
plants flowering perennials that are actually in the mint family so the mint
family of course you've got your pepper mint in your spearmint and all those
good guys but think about the flowering types that are out there so for example
this is cat mint or nepeta it is a great blue blooming plant out there perennial
plant that's really Hardy great long bloomer awesome out in the landscape
this one's called Persian blue and then you have in the
mint family still you have something like this pink Agastache in the back
sometimes it's called false hyssop and that one it comes in blue and pink and
orange all different colors there they're a little bit more upright and
taller but again great mint family plant something you might be a little bit more
familiar with is Bee Balm or monarda that's a wonderful mint and also some
tall varieties some short varieties lots of different colors in that family so
again all those mint families work out really really well for attracting the
butterflies the next plant you should look for in the perennial garden is
going to be the Daisy any perennial flower that produces a daisy type flower
bud if you will bloom they'll have that nice central eye and then they'll have
the puddles the petals right around these types of plants are great for
attracting butterflies not only are they a great landing spot and just kind of
they can stand around Sun their wings and so forth but there's also a lot of
nectar and these types of Daisy plants so you can look for shasta daisies like
this one this is a great kind of fluffy one it's called freak you can use
blanket flower which is on the far side of the shasta daisy you can use cone
flowers as well they're just starting to come out so again you've got early
blooming daisies a little bit later blooming daisies as well
the coreopsis are fantastic as a butterfly plant long bloomer due
resistant to so there's quite a few daisies back here black eyed Susans are
just starting to pop out and also look at the asters the asters are going to be
one of those mid to late summer bloomers that really keeps the butterflies coming
so do look for the daisy family as well the last family of plants that you
should look for to attract butterflies is going to be a family of plants that
produces a large cluster flower okay and it has a lot of small individual flowers
creating that cluster so give you some examples here things like
butterfly bush how can we go wrong right with butterfly bush so this is buzz
butterfly bush we've got a couple different colors here a lavender and a
raspberry but if you look close at those flowers they're a panicle type flower
but they have hundreds of little tiny flowers with a lot of nectar in them so
that's something that'll work great for you there is a ground cover verbena
called homestead purple verbena as a perennial or as an annual will work
again because look at all of those flowers that are very nectar rich behind
me I have pin cushion I also have the spiraea so your landscape spireas
do really really well and again produce dozens of flowers that are nectar rich
for these butterflies right in the background is going to be your yarrow
this is a fantastic really really great smelling type of herb okay and yarrow
whether it's a yellow or apricot delight great great plant to attract those
butterflies so if you keep in mind that they do like the herb family they
definitely like the mint family they love daisies as well and they love
plants that have you know big clustered blooms with lots of small tiny flowers
you'll be set just pick the ones that are early mid and late season blooming
some of them will make great host plants for those caterpillars and you're ready
to go enjoy your butterfly garden