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FrontRangeLiving.com -> Outdoors -> Butterfly Garden
How to cultivate a butterfly garden-an interview with George Brinkmann
George Brinkmann is a consultant specializing in native
landscape and habitat restoration. He’s the retired horticulturist from the
Butterfly Pavilion in Westminster and a teacher and staff
horticulturalist of the Denver Botanic Gardens. Colorado is home to 250 species
of butterflies, more than anywhere else in North America. On any July day, if
you hike on Mount Evans, you’ll see a variety of native butterflies.
FRL: How do you set about to plant a butterfly garden, and is
that related to other insects as well?
Brinkmann: I
think they are very interrelated. You need three elements. You need host plants
that the butterflies feed on. You also need nectar sources and shelter.
To broaden
that to a habitat garden, we are talking about other insects -- pollinators like
honeybees, ladybird beetles and different kinds of flies. Your aim is to get a
mix of critters that balance themselves. They all need nectar sources.
Rabbitbrush
is excellent, mint or thyme is a pollen or nectar source and easy to grow in
this Rocky Mountain area. Incorporate these into your landscape and they’ll
feed a number of insects. I have rabbitbrush at the Pavilion. It blooms in late
summer and must have over a 100 honeybees on it.
FRL: How do you go about choosing plants?
Brinkmann: First,
you need to plant native material. One thing you need to understand is the life
cycle of the butterfly. The eggs are laid only on a host plant. The young
caterpillars will only eat on a specific plant before they change into a
chrysalis, the pupa stage, and then to a butterfly. Each species of butterfly
has its own plant that they survive on.
For the Black Swallowtail, it’s dill or parsley. Many skippers (native prairie flies) feed
on grasses on the prairie; the Variegated Fritillary is a native and feeds on
flax, blue flax. The most common is the Painted Lady and it feeds on thistle. If
you eliminate the plant, you eliminate that species. For example, if you don’t
have milkweed, you won’t have monarchs. Grow milkweed, Asclepias tuberosa,
called butterfly weed, or Asclepias incarnata. Both grow well in Colorado
and are perennials. Incarnata grows where it’s wet. Grow chokecherry,
the host plant for the Tiger Swallowtail, the largest butterfly in Colorado,
FRL: How would you go about designing such a garden?
Brinkmann: Besides natives, you can also use cultivars or hybrids in garden
design. You need to have plants that grow in a specific environment. For
example, if you have an area hot and dry then you need plants that thrive:
cactus, prickly pear, penstemon, both native or hybrid.
Since you
plant annuals in the spring, I’d pick the best for nectar source and zinnia is
the best. I always say, ‘Plant them and they will come.’ So if you plant
zinnias you’ll get butterflies and bees. Another annual is verbena; there’s
a particular variety called ‘Homestead Purple’ that’s good. But there are
many others, too. Some are annual, some are perennials. One exceptional verbena
is bonariensis. It grows two to three-feet tall and reseeds itself.
Another annual is the Mexican sunflower, Tithonia rotundifolia. All these
are available in garden centers.
You’d be
surprised at how much habitat for butterflies we’re losing every day. You
don’t attract butterflies with bluegrass, junipers or crushed rocks and, yet,
they are so extensively used.
FRL: Do butterflies also need water, or boggy areas?
Brinkmann: Yes,
sometimes you’ll see butterflies clustered on the ground when you’re hiking.
That’s called puddling. They’re getting salt and moisture from mud.
They’ll suck the minerals from the ground, like calcium, which they need to
sustain themselves.
Fireflies
only exist in bog areas. We have natural bog areas all over Colorado. Roxborough
State Park is one; Chatfield Arboretum is another. These are natural wetlands
and we need to preserve these areas. In this metropolitan area of Denver there
are a number of small bog areas.
FRL: How would you design a garden for spring, summer and
fall?
Brinkmann: The
spring bloomers would be viburnum, spireas, lilacs – the flowering shrubs.
Then by summer some of the buddleias, the butterfly bush, will bloom
although many of those are late summer. Then in the summer you have your annuals
like zinnia and perennials. Then blue mist spirea, which is not a real spirea,
is good for late summer. It also attracts bees. In the fall, sedum, such as
dragon’s blood, draws insects--also milkweed and rudbeckia. It’s not the size
of the garden that’s important, but the plant material. You don’t have to
have a big garden, it could even be a flowerbox on your patio.
FRL: What about people who don’t want to attract wasps or
bees?
Brinkmann: Some people don’t like wasps or bees, but without these
pollinators, you would not have squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, apples, or any fruits. To
have pollinators, you have to grow without insecticides. What I’ve discovered
at the Butterfly Pavilion, with no toxic elements, is that nature has balanced
itself. I have no injuries with insects. If you have insects on your plants that
you don’t want, just prune it off or use water to hose the aphids off. Use the
least toxic control that you can.
I’m 70
years old so I came from a whole different way of growing plants. I worked in a
greenhouse and we used the most toxic ingredients known to man, derived from
nerve gasses. We got tremendous effects for a while and then we got insects
immune to that. Plus, from a medical standpoint it’s dangerous. I had a mask
that leaked one time and I spent a night in the hospital. I’m so relieved to
get away from that.
FRL: What are the best ways to provide shelter?
Brinkmann: To
attract butterflies and birds, you need trees and shrubs like the serviceberry
bush or a crabapple tree. You need a wind break like a big rock, because when a
butterfly opens its wings it’s soaking up solar energy. Big slabs of rocks on
the top of a berm give you pockets for the butterflies to hide in and you may
have three generations over the summer.
For the
butterflies who lay eggs in fall over winter, the chrysalis will be attached to
the bottom of a rock. The Mourning Cloak butterfly winters as an adult, those
are the first you’ll see in the spring in the canyons above Boulder. That’s
a native butterfly. They can winter over in cold temperatures.
The message
is to restore habitat and you can do that in a small way in your yard.
Collectively, if everyone cooperated, that would be a big impact.
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