Fairy Garden Handbook by Liza Gardner Walsh

Author:Liza Gardner Walsh
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781608932153
Publisher: Down East Books
Published: 2013-02-09T00:00:00+00:00

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Garden Projects

When the winds of March are wakening the crocuses and crickets, did you ever find a fairy near some budding little thickets,...and when she sees you creeping up to get a closer peek, she tumbles through the daffodils, a-playing hide and seek.

~ MARJORIE BARROWS

BUTTERFLY GARDENS

The fairies are clapping their tiny hands and feverishly beating their wings because they are proud of you for making such stunning gardens. You can further enchant them by caring for their beloved friends, the butterflies and the birds. Butterflies help pollination by drinking the nectar deep inside a flower. Their mouth, also known as a proboscis, is like a long drinking straw sucking up delicious flower juice. While the butterfly drinks, pollen attaches to its body and is carried in flight to the other flowers, pollinating them and creating new flowers. Anyone who helps flowers this directly deserves the fairies’ everlasting loyalty.

In order to pay tribute to all that these magnificent winged creatures do for the flowers, you can design and plant a garden just for them. Butterflies generally like many of the same flowers as fairies. But while a fairy has an entire language and history, as well as very specific uses for certain flowers, butterflies just tend to like the way flowers smell and their vivid colors. The kind of brilliant and dramatic flowers butterflies flock to require a sunny spot in the garden, but one also protected from harsh wind. Several of the plants that butterflies love are perennial (that word from earlier, meaning flowers that come back every year). Some of these include: yarrow, coreopsis, purple coneflower (also called echinacea), phlox, honeysuckle, columbine, and buddleia (also known as butterfly bush).

To attract that marathon migrator, the monarch, make sure to have some milkweed in your garden. Milkweed has a tendency to spread wildly due to the large number of seeds in its pods, so it is best to plant it in a more wild part of your yard. In the middle of the summer begin to look under the leaves of the milkweed and on its stalk for monarch caterpillars hungrily munching away. This is their main food source allowing them to fatten up in preparation for their miraculous journey.

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