As I wait for the white fluff from the skies, visions of next year’s gardens dance in my head.
I definitely plan to incorporate more pollinator friendly plants.
I so enjoyed the antics of butterflies and hummingbirds and plan to accommodate them with even more delicacies.The hummers couldn’t seem to leave the honeysuckle vine climbing on my rock wall alone. And now though the tiny little birds have flown to warmer places, like many of my two legged friends, the shiny, bright red berries and late coral-red, yellow blooms have caught the attention of chickadees and native bees.
The fall blooming asters are sometime so filled with butterflies their blue flowers appear to be orange.
I hadn’t appreciated the magnetic power of the agastache (Hyssop) until this summer. I don’t think there was room for harmful insects as many species of bees and butterflies constantly visited the flowers. There are so many varieties and cultivars of agastache and they are not only lovely and colorful, they are extremely hardy and drought tolerant.
The diversity of the penstemon species is especially appealing to pollinators. The flowers bloom from early summer to late fall.
If you have room for Goldenrod (Solidago), another magnet for bees, you may have to hire a housekeeper because observing the many species of bees will consume valuable vacuuming time.
And the culinary herbs, oregano, sage, rosemary, parsley, basil and mint literally hummed with pollinator activity all summer. I plan to tuck more of them in with my flowers next year.
All these caterpillars, (I dislike the word Larva), need food to become butterflies and moths.
When larva emerge from their eggs, they eat their protective egg covering but they are not satisfied with that. They are hungry. Most of a butterfly’s food consumption is in the metamorphic stage of the caterpillar.
If you don’t partially care to watch the caterpillars devour your flowers, taller host plants are easy to incorporate in your garden. Some trees and shrubs to consider are: Oak and Willow trees, Saskatoon Serviceberry (Amelanchier alnifolia), Ocean Spray (Holodiscus discolor), Chokecherry (Prunus virginiana), Blue Elderberry (Sambucus), Yellow Rabbitbrush (Chrysothamnus) and Golden Currant (Ribes aureus).
Trees satisfy ten times the number of moth and butterfly species in the larval stage as wildflowers and grasses.
The voracious appetites of the caterpillars will not usually affect the health and longevity of trees and shrubs.
Some other native plants attractive to pollinators in the fall garden to consider, along with Penstemon, Agastache and Goldenrod, are Echinacea, Rudbeckia, New England Aster, Joe Pye Weed and Yarrow.
Another note about Native plants verses introduced plants: They are four times more likely to attract native bees and three times more species of butterflies will visit them.
Though I appreciate a well-tended clean look to my winter garden as much as anybody else I know that leaving a few areas of plant litter helps encourage pollinators to winter over comfortably.
-- Margaret A. Swenson is a Washington State University master gardener. Contact her online at http://spokane-county.wsu.edu/spokane/ or call 509-477-2181.
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