Flower gardening is a wonderful hobby that can attract more than just your neighbor’s eyes. Whether you’re into annual or perennial flower gardening, your bold colors and soft fragrances will likely attract equally colorful birds, bees, butterflies, ladybugs and dragonflies. And luring these visitors isn’t such a bad thing. These beneficial creatures will kill off annoying insects like flies and mosquitoes, not to mention leaf-chewing aphids and beetles that do more harm than good. At the same time, you’ll enjoy the attractive colors of these fine friends of the garden.
If you’re interested in creating a garden that will attract song birds, then you can add a few special shrubs, annuals, perennials, native and cultivated plants to draw them to your yard. By growing plants from each group, you can provide fruits and seeds for all seasons to keep your feathered friends singing all year long. Be sure to add a bird bath and throw seeds out in the winter to keep your bird clan happy. Also, consider that in addition to your flowers, birds like trees for nesting, protection and shelter from the elements. Sometimes the trees even provide food like sap, seeds and berries. You can consider deciduous trees like dogwood, red mulberry, American mountain ash, sassafras, hazelnut, chestnut and black walnut, as well as evergreen trees like American holly, red cedar, blue spruce, Douglas fir, white cedar, ponderosa pine and California juniper.
You may want to also consider flower gardening to attract red ladybugs and dragonflies too. These carnivores will eat the unsightly aphids, beetles, flies, mosquitoes and other pesky creatures that are doing damage to your garden. Favorite ladybug dinners include cilantro, dill, fennel, chamomile, cosmos, geraniums, penstemon, yarrow and coreopsis. Water gardens that are generally shallow but two feet deep in the center are the best way to lure dragonflies, who enjoy a cool swim and places to hide beneath garden plants. They also like pond lilies, buttonbush, seedbox and horsetail rush, as these provide the sort of cover dragonflies like.
Of course everyone would like to know how their flower gardening can attract more beautiful butterflies. While their larvae can sometimes be destructive at gobbling up tree leaves, you can minimize their damage by creating an obscured section of the yard just for baby caterpillar maturation. The larvae like to eat thistle, milkweed, hollyhock, sunflower, snapdragon, lupine, aster, beard tongue and heliotrope varieties. Adult butterflies feed largely on flower nectar, so garden guides recommend adding alyssum, asters, azalea, bee balm, blueberry, butterfly bush, butterfly weed, coneflower, delphinium, goldenrod, impatiens, Joe-pye weed, lilac, marigolds, verbena and yarrow.
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