Container Gardening is for the Birds...

and the butterflies too!



I was very impatient to fill my clay chimney tiles with plants, but I made myself wait until after Mother's Day, like a good girl. Especially since it has been cold, rainy and threatening frost right up until the Monday after. Since the chimney tiles are in the butterfly and hummingbird garden...well, one of the butterfly and hummingbird gardens, I decided to buy plants for the containers that would attract both hummingbirds and butterflies. In the clay tiles I planted my beloved lantana, verbena, Calibrachoa or Superbells, and the purple wave petunias that I grew from seed.



Lantana is one of my favorite plants for attracting butterflies to the garden. Last year I bought five plants and put them in the ground. It was a cool and rainy summer and they never bloomed. It was a great disappointment to me. This year I decided to put them in containers so hopefully, even if it is cool, there will be a better chance for blooms.

I spent a lot of time outside today and I have seen more butterflies today than I saw all of last summer! I even saw a tiger swallowtail! Most of the butterflies were flitting around so fast that I couldn't even tell what they were. I didn't see a single one of them land in my garden. I think they were on a mission, like trying not to get eaten by the mama birds!



I am loving this bright turquoise ladder in the yard. As I was contemplating what to plant that would climb up this unique trellis, I noticed that something was already growing. I believe this is the morning glory that I planted last year to climb up the diseased tree before we chopped it down. It was so cool and rainy that the seeds never germinated. I can't remember what color I planted, knowing me, it was probably pink or purple. I wish I had saved the seed package.

I hope everyone has a lovely weekend! I'm hoping it will dry out and be warm enough for me to do some painting and more planting!

Finally, I Got My Lantana!

For the past three weeks I've been on the lookout for my favorite lantana. I've been stopping at every garden center and nursery I pass trying to find it. Yesterday I stopped at five places and had no luck at all. Today I was in a different part of town and checked one of the garden centers and they had just received a shipment of it! I was so happy to finally have my lantana, actually I was quite giddy about it even making up a stupid little song in the car, (thankfully no one was with me so I could be silly without embarrassing myself)! It obviously doesn't take much to make me happy! Lantana is one of my must have plants for my butterfly garden. Here is one reason why:



The hummingbird, (Clearwing), moths love them, as do the butterflies and the hummingbirds.
I wish they were as common here as they are in the south or I wish I could grow them myself so I didn't have to search high and low for them each spring.

I also did something today that I hate to do and that is take advantage of plant warranties. I feel so silly taking dead plants back to the store. I had two Knock Out roses, (out of seven), that didn't make it and two Dwarf Alberta spruces- that is about $40.00 worth of plants, so I felt like I just had to. Last year I had two Alberta spruces that died and I didn't return them I just replaced them making sure to keep the receipts in case it happened again. It did. I've planted four others that have done well, I'm not sure why these keep dying. I'm not replacing them this time, I'll use the credit for something else. I did replace the Knock Out rose, but I just bought one large healthier one rather than two smaller ones that didn't look very good to me.

I got the five lantanas planted this evening, it was still too wet to plant the rose, hopefully I can do that tomorrow.

Edited to say: These are archive pictures from the lantana that was in my garden last year. The lantana that I selected yesterday only had buds and no blooms yet, so I didn't take a picture of it. Sorry for the confusion.