Butterfly Gardening

Lesson 2: Perennials

Herbs

Plants you can share.

Herbs that butterflies love. You will too. Herbs are the plants that we use in our everyday lives. Pick up any book about herbs and you will find chapters extolling their virtues in cooking, teas, medicines, cosmetics, and dyes. If these aren't enough reasons to grow herbs, the descriptions of their wonderful scented foliage and flowers will certainly persuade anyone to add some to the garden. However, one of the greatest pleasures gained by growing herbs is not mentioned in most books:

They are outstanding plants for attracting butterflies and other pollinating insects.

From The Butterfly Gardener's Guide:

The following herbs will attract butterflies to your garden. Grow them by themsleves or mix them in with other plants. Create a diverse buffet.

Design Suggestion:

HERB SPIRAL
A two-foot high raised rock spiral planted with a variety of herbs and greens. The heat creates a unique microclimate, allowing both heat-loving herbs and shade-loving greens to be grown. A favourite of both gardeners and cooks, herb spirals can also grow herbs for tea, medicine, and even pest control. Create a herbal spiral garden that will attract butterflies to your garden and provide you with herbs for the kitchen. The plant list below offers a list of herbs which attract butterflies.

• CATMINT - Nepeta

• CREEPING THYME - Thymus serpyllum

• DILL - Anethum graveolens

• MEALY-CUP SAGE - Salvia farinacea

• MARJORAM - Origanum majorana

• MINT - Mentha spp.

• OREGANO - Origanum spp.

You can pick the plants that suit you best and interplant them with other herbal favourites such as basil and rosemary. Include a few host plants into the design and you have a garden that feeds you and houses and feeds butterflies. An ideal small space garden, the butterfly herbal spiral garden is a good family project.

Raised Beds

A herb spiral garden is a raised herb bed shaped with rocks formed into conical spirals (6' in diameter and 3' tall). The herb spirals that we planted last year were planted with Echinacea, lavender, oregano, rosemary, thyme and as always, basil.

The raised spiral shape of the herb garden is art imitating Life, as the garden is modelled on natural spirals and therefor offers plants much of the diversity found in Nature - different zones of moisture, different aspects of the sun, and an increased planting area by utilizing vertical space as well as lateral space.

The butterfly herbal spiral garden will fit into any size property. Locate the spiral near your door so that you can reach out an harvest what you need. Make sure you can see it from a window so that you can enjoy the butterflies and the plants.

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