Ooh - i love woodruff syrup.
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A common ingredient for Mead in colonial times.
How do you make woodruff syrup? Cooking Flowers,? leafs?
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While my wife is off playing on a ‘Fall Color’ cruise ship this coming week, the boys and I are adding irrigation to the six butterfly gardens we recently planted. Here you can sort of make out a Lion’s Ear and Penstemon plant between Simeon (left) and Littlefoot, receiving water from some new stream-bubbler heads. Also in front of Littlefoot you can see water from the system I tapped into going to a Citrus tree.
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From my own observations of hummingbirds in my yard, the most frequented plants are Southwest Cardinal Flower (Lobelia cardinalis subsp.) and Cigar Plant (Cuphea ignea) – second only to fruit tree blossoms.
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How about flowers this year? Hot and dry weather, but some flowers do not mind.
This is verbena bonaresis. It looks like it likes it dry.
I also have very good hollyhocks this year, they just keep flowering.
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Butterfly weed. Long bloom period.
Russian Sage. Great smell. Almost done blooming. Very drought tolerant. It was covered in bees for about 3 weeks. Still a few looking for the last remaining flowers.
Purple Coneflower. The little bees and butterflies are working it hard now. Long bloom period and drought tolerant. Not sure how the bees can fly with that much pollen on their legs!
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6/25/2023.
Five years later and time for some renovation!
Janet and I grew tired of cleaning out weeds in our NE butterfly garden. So Janet cleaned them out one last time – then I transplanted a few of the milkweeds, repositioned some sprinklers, made installed wood and brick perimeter borders, laid down landscape fabric on bare areas, and filled it all with 2.5 30 gallon barrels of 1" diameter Sequoia Forest bark.
During:
After:
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Free Printable Graph Paper
For anyone who needs it to help plotting your Butterfly Garden out, you can find printable graph paper templates here.