The Seed Volume 40, Butterfly Gardening

Why do we love butterflies so much?  

 

Is it the beauty and freedom that define their days?  Is it the transformative potential of the chrysalis that attracts us?  After all, butterflies are just bugs too, right?  How is it that we save so much room in our hearts for one bug and have entire industries devoted to the extermination of other bugs?  

Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

~Nathaniel Hawthorne

Whatever butterflies are doing that strikes our imaginations and warms our hearts, they seem to be doing it better then any other insect around.  While the dragonfly can impresses us with speed, agility, and grace, the butterflies’ lackadaisical charm flutters ever deeper into our hearts.  While the honey bees work day and night to serve our human purposes, so many people react to their little striped suits with sheer panic, but come the lazy butterfly hopping around on the breeze and people everywhere stop to smile.  I think if I was an ant or a spider I might be a little jealous of those gaudy butterflies.

 

Whatever the reason, folks love butterflies, and that’s good enough for me.  When we make a home for butterflies, we make a home for all nature.  Whatever jealousy the other bugs might feel for butterflies surely would abate if they had any notion that in honor of these little winged wonders, wantonly destructive humans take a momentary pause from laying waste to the land to build butterfly sanctuaries and gardens where all sorts of creepy crawlies can make a cozy home.

As a naturalist, I think it’s high time we humans started devoting more space to the other creatures we share this planet with, and if butterflies can guide the way towards a healthy habitat, so be it!

I’ve heard it said that love is like a butterfly; it goes wherever it pleases and it pleases wherever it goes. I suppose then that just as we need to prepare our hearts if they are to receive love, we need to prepare our yards if they are to receive butterflies.  This month’s volume of The Seed is dedicated to preparing the hearts, minds, and yards of Minnesota gardeners to receive the whimsical love that only butterflies can give.

We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.

~Carl Sagan

"Just living is not enough," said the butterfly, "one must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower."

~Hans Christian Anderson

The Butterfly Effect

Tiny actions can have huge effects on complex systems.  The butterfly effect is a theory used by scientists and storytellers alike to explain the notion that even seemingly insignificant actions can have a huge impact over time. With this in mind I like to ask myself a seemingly tiny question.  

What is the effect of my life on the Earth’s living systems?  The size of this question however should not be judged by the number of words it takes to ask, but by the millennia it takes to answer.

Our daily decisions have impacts far beyond our capacity to understand. 

Monarchs below and Western Tiger Swallowtail above feast on the nectar of summer blooming native perennial plants.  Butterfly gardening grows beauty and environmental health. I like to plant a few deeply rooted butterfly attracting native plants in amongst my vegetable gardens.  Not only are my vegetable crops helped when the perennial roots draw moisture from deep in the ground durring the heat of the summer, but the butteflies are happy to see the free food I've grown them, and I'm happy to see the butterflies! 
 

I like to think of myself as a snowflake falling on the side of a mountain, helping to build an avalanche.  I may be one of countless billions of tiny, seemingly unimportant, unique forms, but without my weight on the mountainside would the avalanche take longer to fall?  Does my positioning help other snowflakes land and hold fast?

Now let’s take this frozen metaphor to the next level because it’s time for an avalanche of change when it comes to human behavior within the living planetary system, and I’m one little snowflake who’s ready to throw his weight around. 

Whenever I improve local habitat by building butterfly gardens, I feel like a hero of global proportions.  I know that my work is creating a vital space not just for lovely little butterflies, but for many nations of creatures who have been run out and threatened by industrial living.  I’m not alone, and many people of all walks of life are working with the same goals of growing habitat, improving ecosystem health, and ensuring a safe place for us to live.  Someday soon an avalanche of change must descend on our way of life.

Since an avalanche can be a bumpy ride, we’d better go ahead and get those butterfly gardens started so at least we’ll have something pretty to distract us along the way. 

Butterfly Gardening 101

 
Simply put, if you want to see butterflies, plant native flowers.  The most inviting homes for butterflies will have different types of native flowers that bloom and provide nectar all through the growing season.  To ensure your yard has more butterflies then the Jones’s next door, also plant some caterpillar host plants.  One classic example of a caterpillar host plant is common milkweed, which hosts monarch butterflies and seems to grow as freely as the butterfly it hosts.  If monarchs are your goal, make sure you also plant meadow blazingstar, no other nectar-bearing bloomer can make the monarchs line up like this form of Liatris.  Monarchs are also strongly attracted to other forms of milkweed, black eyed susans, coneflowers, and ironweed. 

Why stop at monarchs though when there’s so many wonderful little butterflies out there to see.  Variety is the spice of life, and the more types of native plants you have in your yard, the more likely you’ll see rare forms of butterfly.  Caterpillar host plants include: Artemisia, which is preferred by Painted Lady caterpillars, Hackberry trees which host many creatures including the American Snout and Tawny Emperor caterpillars while Violets, Purslane, and Sedum which will host the lovely Variegated Fritillary.   

Many butterflies will have widely varying food sources.  Much more then nectar passes the pointed proboscis of our protagonist.  Various butterflies will eat everything from leaves and rotting fruit to dead animals and dung.  The greater the variety of native plants you grow including trees, shrubs, blooming perennials and ground covers, the more diverse will be your yards selections of foods, and the more the butterflies will flutter by.  

  
 A butterflies' beauty is bold and obvious. While other garden bugs may appear to human sensibilities as creepy or scary, they are no less important then the butterflies.

   We like the butterflies, are all connected to, and reliant on a living planetary system stocked full of a huge variety of bugs.  In order to protect one type of insect like the butterfly, we must protect all of the other insects, plants, and animals that live in the butterflies ecosystem.

Hints for Butterfly Beginners:

1. Good plants from good sources.
 

Locally, the best butterfly plant selections are sold at 3 garden stores. Visit all three, they each have different selections and really cool gardeners on staff.  Landscape Alternatives, and Outback Nursery are my top stops for butterfly garden plants.  Roy at Landscape Alternatives is especially knowledgeable about local butterfly plant selections. 

2.  Good dirt makes good gardens.

Ignore the silly rumors that native plants like “starved” soil.  I don’t have any idea where or how this rumor got started, but it’s a downright lie.  The meadow, prairie, and woodland soils from this region, are some of the richest soils I’ve ever encountered and I’ve checked out dirt around the world.  If you want success with your new butterfly garden, before you plant, remove any sod, wood mulch, landscaping fabric, or other impediment to growth, and lay down at least 6 inches of fresh compost (not bagged, never trust a dirt bag), after laying down the compost turn it into the soil with a shovel leaving large chunks of the soil undisturbed.  After the compost has been incorporated into the soil, simply cover with more compost till the surface of the garden is smooth and then plant away till your garden is full and your heart is content. 

3.  Cover the ground in green.

I call this notion “living mulch”.  Not only will this practice keep more moisture in your soil, but by shading the ground, it will help ensure that you are packing your space with plenty of plant diversity.  Lawn grass doesn’t count.  Sod grass lawns provide habitat for neither butterfly, nor bird, nor beast.  When designing your yard, plan for as little lawn, and as much garden as possible.  If you make the flowers happy, you’ll make the butterflies ecstatic!

4.   Grow many layers of canopy.

When we build habitat, it’s good to let nature be our guide.  Before the Twin Cities existed in this area, there was forest.  When we wish to heal the land locally, we need only help recreate the forest.  Native trees and shrubs should be included in the plan for any well landscaped twin cities yard.  I like to plant meadow plants around and underneath newly establishing trees.  Meadows are what the forest uses to recreate itself and fill in the gaps after windfalls and forest fires.  Think of our city building and farming practices as being as destructive to the local forests as a fire or tornado, then you can begin to see the amazing amount of repair we need to create in our environment before it will be healthy again.   

5.   Never EVER use pesticides or chemical fertilizers.

Butterflies are delicate, and we aren’t all that much tougher then them. It doesn’t take much to upset the balance of health in any ecosystem. We’ve already discussed how tiny decisions have big impacts, and this is certainly the case here.  Think of butterflies as the canary to your back yard coal mine.  If there’s so much poison that delicate butterflies are getting sick, then wake up dummy, so are you.  Nature did just fine thank you before we meddling humans came along with our chemical solutions and sprays.  The last thing anyone wishing to grow butterflies should want to do is poison their yard with pesticides or chemical fertilizers.     

The gentle breeze blown by a butterflies beating wing in your back yard could just be the catalyst for the creation of a current of cultural change in America.  Life is funny like that.  Little actions in one place can have huge impacts in seemingly unrelated, far away places. A friend of mine once said to me of butterflies “they should be called flutter-byes, that’s what they do”.  I couldn’t agree more.  Now is the best time to plan a butterfly garden, before the growing season flutters by.

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The Seed Volume 39, Eat A Weed

Eeyore said it best,

“A weed is a flower too, once you get to know it.”

I never cease to be amazed at the fear that passes over folk’s faces when I suggest to them that dandelions or creeping charlie are valuable in the landscape. 

Maybe it’s because I’m a rebel, or maybe it’s because of my respect for plants, but I’ve always loved weeds, in fact I can safely say weeds are my heroes.  Take the dandelion for instance.  How many of us are completely unaware of the power of this plant? 

Dandelion is only the Diana Prince like moniker through which the super hero also known as Taraxacum hides her secret Wonder Woman identity.  Providing free nourishing food, and medicine for the masses, offering soil fertility, and perfect plant companionship for tomatoes and other shallow rooted crops, and all of this in a form that is simple, ruggedly beautiful, and completely unstoppable.  Sounds like your average garden super-hero job description to me.

I for one think weeds are terrific.  I think it’s silly to be terrified of flowers. 

Gardening is a co-creative process, the gardener and the garden both creating away night and day, each with their own ideas and intentions.  As a landscape designer I like to remind myself that humans are far from alone in their desire to alter the world around them to better suit their own needs.  Every time a bird in the woods eats a seed and poops it out that little bird increases the population of its favorite foods in the forest.  This very humbling notion means that all the high-browed landscape design schools, students, and practitioners are essentially performing the same function that a bird performs when it shits.  So while we landscape designers have our notions and practices, the birds, animals, plants, soils, and landscapes have their own notions and practices, which brings me back to weeds. 

Nature uses weeds to perform functions that are often beyond our capacity to easily grasp or even understand at all.  I like to point out to folks that in a lawn made of sod grass for instance, our hero the dandelion will drive roots into the earth allowing minerals and nutrients from deep in the ground to be accessed by the shallow rooted turf grass.  The channels made in the ground by dandelions roots also help drive water and air downward increasing the overall capacity for root depth and allowing water to enter the water table instead of rushing off to damage local creeks, rivers, or lakes.

If the garden is like our mother in how it knows us, nurtures us, punishes us when we deserve it, but loves us unconditionally, then the Earth is like our grandmother.  The Earth let’s us do what we wish, and she gives us everything we can need or want, but she knows so much more then we can imagine that we are silly to question her ways. 

When you go back far enough in time, it’s plain to see that the “gardens” of this Earth created the very bloodlines of those who call themselves “gardeners”.  From this humble perspective we can rethink what it means to be a weed, and if indeed it may be that the worst, most pernicious weed seeds sprout in our own imaginations. 

Let us yank from the root the damaging notion that some plants are evil.  Let us instead see beauty, life, and nourishment wherever we can, and let’s all celebrate the fact that nature cared enough to give us each other and the rest of the creatures on this lonely planet to keep us happy and healthy.

Click Here to learn about some of the terrific edible and medicinal weeds that grace the presence of our Minneapolis yards and gardens.

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Giving Tree Gardens Expands Archives!

Giving Tree Gardens would like to welcome in the new year with a gift to all the gardening world!
Our newsletter, "The Seed" is nearly 3 years old, and with 33 informative issues currently in our archives, we thought it high time to make the archives a little more accessible. Visit our
new expanded archives to learn everything you want to know about organic gardening and Earth-friendly landscaping!

CLICK BELOW TO SEE THE NEW EXPANDED ARCHIVES!


CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE SEED ARCHIVES

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