Let’s Shop for Native Plants & Explore my Butterfly Garden | Butterfly Gardening

Hey everyone, welcome to my Florida butterfly garden. Today we're starting off this video and this adventure with a trip to the nectary. I'm going to be delivering these pentas to them. So if you've been wanting some red pentas and you're in central Florida, you can visit the nectary and get some. I'm taking over 30. So there'll be a lot hopefully. The last. And you know while I'm there, I hope to take you on a little walk through the nectary. The problem is when I get there, I start talking to everybody and I totally forget. So I've like got it in my mind. Stay focused and film in the nectary. All right, I'm gonna go get these plants loaded up and I'll see you hopefully at the nectary. It is so cold. I had to put my big coat on. I had put this thing away. Anyway pentas filling the trunk or hatch of my car. I love it. All right, I'm on my way, but I wanted to share something with you because Hermes is not my only little Cuban tree frog friend because well, first of all, I did see Hermes last night took the dogs out. He came out to see me. There's another one that lives in the hatch of my car. And let me tell you every time I close the hatch I have to look for it and make sure that it's not somewhere that's going to get smushed when I close the hatch. It causes me some stress. And I've come to realize this little one is just planning on staying here because it's always here. And it's here right now. So let me introduce you to um Gosh, um, I don't know. What should his name be? I got Hermes. um Oh, I'm drawing the blank. I'll think of something. This is little Laurent. Why Laurent? Well, I named Hermes after a luxury brand. So this one will be after Yves Saint Laurent, right? And it's little. It's a little one, but it's always here. So now he is nice and safe. I know the hatch is gonna close over him. No. Don't go up there. That's not a safe place. All right, let me hurry up. Oh, no. No, that's not a safe place. Okay, let me go get in position and I'll be back later. Maybe he'll hop down on the plants and he can go live at the nectary. Okay, a couple things. His name is Tom Ford. Laurent. I think that's the name of a vampire somewhere. I don't want Laurent. He's cute. Not a vampire. So Tom Ford it is and um, on a side note, the luxury brands are because of their cosmetic lines. I don't own any luxury brand items like handbags and shoes and clothing. That's that's not my jam, but cosmetic makeup. Tom Ford, they make a good eyeshadow quad. All right, let's get to the nectary. Okay, y'all. The pentas are here. I'm here at the nectary and even better. I'm remembering to film. Let's go walk through the nectary and see what they have. Oh, and they do have some swamp milkweed and yes, I am buying some and no, the rats are not, I repeat, not going to eat it. Look at these gorgeous red pentas they just got in. Okay, it's a really yucky overcast day today, but it's supposed to burn off and we're supposed to have some sunshine later. It looks like they have a really nice supply of Asclepias perennas in also. Oh, and they have a nice supply of Maypop passion vine too and let me tell you their prices are so good. You can't beat their prices here. So this is the host to a gulf fritillary and zebra longwing. I have Passiflora incest, which is not native. It's a hybrid, but this is the native here. They have frost wheat. That's a really, really cool plant. It gets beautiful little white flowers. Pollinators love it. The thing is is that it kind of can grow wonky, so you have to keep your eye on it and make sure it keeps going up and doesn't lean over, but it always manages to get the flowers turning upright again. Dwarf wild coffee. Oh, I didn't know they had a dwarf one. I have the regular wild coffee. There it is back there. I like it because it's got a shiny, shiny leaf. You don't see it often because it's hidden back in my shade garden. And my rouge plants are growing all around it. Look at these Georgia asters back there. Look at the leaves. Lyreleaf sage. Love that. Birdfoot. I have one of these. They're really cute and really cool and interesting, but they didn't do a whole lot. Oh, and you know what? I don't have this. You can get one of these to add to the wildflower garden. They have needle palm. I don't have anything like this. And then look, Marlberry. Yay! We love our Marlberry. Great privacy hedge, fence line, native shrub. Look. Blooms year-round, but primarily summer and fall, but year-round. And it's evergreen. Jamaican capers. Wow, their stock is low. If I've convinced you to get one, you should do it soon. They have two three gallons and three one gallons. Red anise. I think I have this one in my garden and there's a yellow one too, but I think I have the red one. Okay, I don't have one of these. Look how cute it is. This is a quail berry and it blooms and puts berries year-round. It's a low grower. Likes full sun. I looked it up, y'all. I'm getting good. I looked it up before buying, but I think I'm gonna get one of these and add it to the wildflower garden because I don't have one. And it's evergreen. They only have one silver battenwood left in the three gallon and then they have these two gorgeous big ones. Look at that one. That's what mine are gonna look like. Oh my gosh, I'm so excited. I only have one left. I feel like I should buy it, but I'm not going to. I'm not. I don't need any more. Oh, and here's all their swamp milkweeds. A note to my viewers. If you're buying newly growing swamp milkweed, always, and I mean always, go for the plant that's got these little dead sticks sticking out of them because you know these are going to be second year plants and they'll be hardier and bigger, stronger, fuller leaves. These guys here are new this year and they don't have the old last year sticks. So if you can get the ones with the sticks. I already got four of them. So you better hurry. They don't have a whole lot left with the sticks, but they do have some. You know what else I surprisingly don't have is a coral bean. And I see these all the time. I don't know why I don't have one. Of course, they are out of the the one gallon. They have the three gallon though. But this would be something pretty to put in. Oh, I know exactly where I could put the, oh wait, it's got thorns. Wait, it has thorns? Where? I don't see thorns. Do you see thorns? Give me my hand. Oh, I found it. I found the thorn. There, they're right there where the stem comes out. Oh. Huh. I still, I could probably find a place for this because I bet, it says it blooms in spring. I bet hummingbirds would love it. Oh, it does. Look. Look what it says. Hummingbird attractor. Let me go ahead and grab one. I want this one back here. Yeah, this one looks nice. The leaves are very interesting, pretty, and they're different from everything else I have behind the garden chairs, so it'll be nice to put back there. The hummingbirds will be happy. Okay, y'all, my friend Janet was here and I ended up chatting with her and Catherine so much. It was the best visit. I don't remember where I left off, but the sun just came out, so I'm just going to do a little last walkthrough, kind of pan. Look at the coreopsis blooming, so pretty. There is a native plant sale at Hollis Gardens if you're in central Florida this weekend and Florida Native Plant Society is going to be there and they're actually going to be selling some plants from the nectary, so that's cool. Will I be there? Probably not because there's too many people for me. I just want to hide in my backyard and talk to my phone all day. Oh, I'm so glad the sun came out. I want to go home and play in my garden now. We had the best rain yesterday, so let's head home and see what's going on in my garden and I'll show you what all I bought because I think I picked up a few more things that I didn't talk about. Okay, I'm home from the nectary and I have all of my purchases in my cart and I got a really cool pot from them too. Sometimes they'll have random pots for sale, so let's go see what's in my cart. There's a lot of good stuff. Okay, here we are at my cart and look at this pot. It's so heavy. Look at the design on it. Only thing is it does have holes in it, so I'm not gonna make a wetland pot out of it, which is what I kind of like to do. But I will find a special purpose and a place to put this in my garden. And then I got a coral honeysuckle. How pretty. I don't have one of these. I don't know why, but I do now and that's what counts. And then you saw the coral bean and then this little guy here, the quail, quailberry, is that what it was? And then the little violet and four swamp milkweeds with the sticks. And this is a common violet. So I'm going to figure out a way to plant these milkweeds somewhere where they're not going to get eaten by the rats. And I'm still getting that plan figured out in my mind. But once I have it, I'll share it with you guys. You know, as glad as I am that the sun came out, it's getting colder. It's in the 50s right now and I don't like it. We're gonna get in the 30s tonight. I thought it was 40s, but I just checked and it was 38. I don't, I don't like that either. I don't think I'm covering anything though. Hey, everyone. It's Friday morning now and I did end up covering my Malaysian orchid, which I'm going to go down and uncover now. And I also brought in my stem cuttings of giant swallowtail eggs, my wild lime cuttings, and they're sitting in my bathroom windowsill. I just put a picture of those up on my posts, my posts here on YouTube. And if you want to find those, you just go to my main channel page and you can get there by tapping on my name under this video. It'll open up my main channel page and there's a post tab at the top and you can see all the posts that I do and I posted that I took those little babies in. Um, polydomus swallowtail eggs. I don't have much hope left for them, but they're still in the lepidarium. But they're starting to look not, not so good. And it got down to 38 degrees last night here. I can't, I still can't believe it. It's like end-ish of February. I mean we're in the February 20s now and there's only 28 days in February. This must stop. What are these butterflies and the new spring growth on all of my dormant plants? What are they supposed to think with this? Nature is trying to confuse everything. Which actually more likely nature is trying to tell us that we need to think about our caretaking of the planet. This is the new garden section. I did in the last video. I, I said that I wish I could show it to you in the sunshine, but right now this part of my garden's in the shade. But what I'm really loving is the little pathway, especially when walking back up towards the house, how you just come straight across the patio and it just like there's another place to go. I love that. And then I envision walking through here and butterflies all in this area too, as much as they are down at the other end of my garden. And now in this garden space I get much better access to my privetsena and I can do fun things like this. I love just spreading the seeds from these pods on my privetsena. Look at them all in there. Just let them fall. I love it. All right, let's go walk through the garden, see what's going on. And I'm gonna uncover the, I'm gonna uncover the Malaysian orchid. And then we're going to get this video up because you guys will be watching it tonight. And yeah, let's go do, oh look there's more here. I can't, it's like an obsession now. I must stay and release all these seeds. Oh, that one was already done. And they're just so, listen to this, they're just so crunchy too. It's a good noise. See, if you plan a garden, you can have little stress relieving things right outside your door like opening pods and letting the seeds fall. It's super relaxing. Okay, let's go walk through the garden. I have to go get my big coat on because it's cold out here. It's 57. I don't like it. Okay, let's go walk through my garden and I have some things to show you inside too. So, and I'll take my time because it's Friday. Friday, longer video. I kind of like how Fridays I end my Friday videos with the walk through the garden and it's so interesting because there's so many things to show you in one week that are different. Okay, I'll stop talking. Let's go walk through my garden. First thing I want to show you is my white indigo. It came out of dormancy like a champ. I mean it wasn't there and then all of a sudden it was. Look at this. I mean, it's just like boom, here I am and it's getting ready to bloom. Look at that. I'm so excited about that. I love this plant and I'm so glad it did its thing and came out of dormancy. And of course in the background is a beautiful starry rosinweed with lots of buds on it and blooms. Look at them all. So pretty. Starry rosinweed. I love it. One of my, one of my butterfly favorites and it's native. And then of course, you know, I've already shown you this but we can't look at the lyreleaf sage enough. I mean it's beautiful. And then like if I come over at this angle, you can see it. The lyreleaf sage with the backdrop of the starry rosinweed. So pretty. It would be really pretty to just have a garden section full of these too. Which this kind of is in this little spot that and there's more and more things growing up and getting taller in my native wildflower garden. I love it. But this white indigo, that's the showstopper for this week. So coming on down, look there's more starry rosinweeds getting ready to come up. And my little cluster of hammock snake root. I love this plant. I just put some more seeds in my garden room to try and get going. Because even though it doesn't bloom till like October, November I want to say, it's a really pretty supplemental green plant. I like the leaves, like the way it moves in the breeze. I really like it. And it's low. So you know it kind of covers a lot of space. But yet other things can grow up around it. It's going to be really pretty as a backdrop when these starry rosinweeds get taller. We're not going to talk about this. I have six zinnia plants. Six. All those seeds I put in there, I have six. So I'm growing them inside. You'll see those in a minute when we go in. Okay, right here. This is a mini wetland garden and you can see the two scarlet hibiscus coming up. Well, there was a third one right there. And I dug it up. And I moved it. And I'll show you where I put it in a minute. The reason I did that is because they get really tall. So I don't mind having the two taller ones to the back. But I want this area here to be lower. So I can see all the way down. All the way down. To the other end of my garden. And I've been wanting to try a scarlet hibiscus in a wetland garden setting. So that's what I did. I'll show you that in a minute. And then right here I am experimenting with some things for my milkweed. That is trying to grow back and keeps getting eaten. So this one is a glass jar that I have on these little dowels sticking out of the ground. And the dowels hold it up. So we're looking at weeds right now. So there's airflow still. But a rat's not, hopefully not going to knock that off and eat it. It's an experiment. And I'm and I'm also trying one of you guys mentioned putting plastic water bottles. So look, there's a milkweed coming up. It's not even a weed. It's an actual milkweed. And well, it is a weed because it's milkweed, but it's actually milkweed, not another weed. And I put the dowel there to keep the bottle from being knocked over. It just kind of keeps it from blowing away in the wind and all of that. So I'm trying that. Here's another jar. There's actual milkweed coming up in there. And I just have four more water bottles I'm going to bring out. I'm going to start covering all of these as I get more water bottles so they can be protected and start growing up. And this is my clustered bush mint that rats don't like. They don't like the mint. Yes, it is my clustered bush mint. And rats don't like the mint. So it kind of deters them and it's finally growing back from dormancy. So I'm hoping when it gets bigger and bigger the rats will leave my milkweed alone. I put this no square stem in this pot here because it's also in the mint family, but it doesn't seem to keep the rats away because every time I see new growth on this Asclepias perennis here, look there's a little bit there, the next day I'll come out and it'll be gone. So we want those to grow back. Look at them. They're just sticks. They're supposed to have leaves on them. This is what's supposed to be available to monarchs right now to lay eggs on. Any monarchs that happen to be in the area are supposed to be able to lay eggs on this. But they can't because of the rats. Pentis Garden is looking lovely. All of the colors are in bloom. Red, white, pink, lavender. I love how they're all here together. Look at that. That's a lyreleaf sage. And it's really coming up. It's in one of those raised planters. I'm kind of half tempted to move it out because it's so gorgeous, but then it seems happy there. And you know, I like having the taller arrangement in the back. So when those bloom it's just going to be a really pretty backdrop behind the penta. So I probably will leave it there for now. And then you can see some of the rudbeckia hirta. I need to get these flowers up for butterflies. There. There. You stay up there. And look there's another one. They're all hanging down. You need to be up. They're leaning on the pentas. Okay, and then right next door is this really cool metal pot. I got this at the Nectary. Has no drain holes. Perfect for a wetland garden. So, I've got some of the Bacopa monari, monari, in there, which is the water hyssop host plant to the white peacock. It really needs to grow and fill in. And this is where I move that one scarlet hibiscus. Now, imagine if you will, behind this plant are all these pentas and some rudbeckia hirta. And there's going to be the lyreleaf sage. And then coming up in front, it's going to be these incredible scarlet hibiscus blooms. It's going to be fabulous. So I'm excited to have this here. When I moved it, it showed no signs of distress. It's sitting in a pot of mud and water. And it seems as content as can be. I am going to start looking for more containers like this. To spread around my garden and make more and more wetland containers, because I'm absolutely loving them. Florida has so many fabulous aquatic wetland plants. And I just want to display them all around the garden. Like over here, remember I did the pickerel weed planter. And it is just, look how gorgeous, first of all, the bacopa is in there. The water has set. That's what it'll look like in that other planter as it grows in. And then the pickerel weed is as happy as can be. Sitting here and when it starts blooming, oh my gosh, it's going to be fantastic. This is another cool pot I got at the nectarine. Don't Catherine, if you ever get any, because sometimes they'll find them like thrift stores or or people will bring them by or whatever. I was like just put them aside. I'll buy them all. So, I love it. And this whole garden section is just really looking pretty. My little zinnias. My two still blooming down there. The cosmos has a bud on it. And the salvias are all blooming. My tropical sage. And look at the the bluer one back there. I mean, it's so pretty. Look how pretty all that is. And plus my Mexican sunflower is back there. And then when you come up here, oh my goodness, these verbena. I, I'm trying to watch the seed, the seed heads, the flower heads, as they dry out because I want to see if I can collect seeds. Let me show you over here. It looks like, see right there. It looks like it must have dropped some seed because there's some babies coming in there. Because I want more of this. I love this plant. And the butterflies have been loving it too. So let me come over from this angle so you can see how pretty all of this is together. And then you go up and you see the verbena. Oh my gosh, I just love it. It's really, this garden section's really coming together nicely. And speaking of coming together, the orange zest cestrum is like on fire. Look at this baby. I mean it was just like a, it is taken off. I can't, it was just, see these darker, darker leaves here. That was it. All this light green is new and it's blooming. Orange zest cestrum. I'm so excited to see this just being very happy in this little pot over here. Remember my swamp milkweeds I have planted back here in these pots? And the Caterpillar Co. rats are eating them too. So I put the glass jars and all plastic bottles, whatever I have, I'll put it in here to try and keep them protected so they can grow. And it wasn't too long ago that I took you through here and showed you my pipevine. Look how much more it's grown in. It's fabulous. I am thrilled with its growth and you know, unfortunately my eggs that I had didn't hatch but now I'll have even more pipevine ready for when I do get some caterpillars because I will get some caterpillars. Here's a peek at a little monarch caterpillar. Still in its outside protected space in my garden that I showed you a few videos ago. Here's another one. So adorable. Only caterpillars I have right now, but I'm grateful for them. And there's probably more to show you but guess what? I need to go in and get this video edited and uploaded and ready for you to watch tonight. I love that. I love filming and being like right on what's happening for real in my garden like right now and even though this is a butterfly garden and you don't see any butterflies it's because this cold weather, a hurricane and aerial mosquito spray control has really set things back, but they will come. So stay with me if you're new here. You will see the butterflies and I will see you in my next video. Have a great weekend everyone. Okay, so video's not over and I'm back because I was in editing and twice in our little garden tour I said I had some things to show you inside and I never showed them to you. So guess what? I have some things to show you inside. Remember I had moved my little Mexican sunflower seedlings outside. Well, they weren't doing as well outside. So I brought them back in with my little foil set up and they seem much happier in here. So this is where we're going to stay until they're ready and then I'll like harden them off and plant them out in my garden and I started some milkweed seeds. So in the little cups are milkweed seeds and then in the bigger cups are some sleepy hibiscus, scarlet hibiscus, hammock snake root hasn't germinated yet. What else did I put in here? Oh the the borage. So it hasn't germinated yet either. But look at the little zinnias. So when these zinnias get taller and bigger then I'll transplant them into that raised planter. I'm going to get more started also. I just have to make more space for seeds starting in here. I also ordered a couple of packets of seeds. I got Dame's Rocket. I found this suggestion on, it was an article I was reading about swallowtail butterflies and this was like one of the top favorite nectar flowers. So immediately, I mean immediately I hopped over to Amazon to see if they had some and they did. So I have these and then I ordered some more Larkspur because I have some and I remember last year it was really pretty and that's what is coming up in the plant with the Vitex. So I thought well, I'll just get some more and this is a multicolor set of them. So that'll be awesome. And I also think I ordered some lavender, but that's on the delayed delivery and so that'll be coming at the end of this month. And then earlier I bought some more Cosmos Seed. And then I got some of the California Giant Zinnias. And this is my tried and true, the Cut and Come Again. I don't know if I showed you these already, but it won't hurt to see them again. But the Cut and Come Again are my tried and true. That's the original Zinnias I started with in my garden and when I used these it was my best Zinnia year. And then I started trying to get all fancy and anyway, I'm still trying to get all fancy, but I'm also going to bring back the Tried and True Cut and Come Again Pumila Mix. And these are the ones that the butterflies like because it has the the disc of pollen in the center that the butterflies like to be able to land on the petals and then get the pollen from the center. Kind of like a Mexican Sunflower how that flower is arranged. All right. Now I am going to go in and finish editing this video and I will see you tonight. I can't wait to read your comments. Please comment. And I will see you in my next video. Pretty sure this is the real real end.