March 10, 2023 cottage butterfly garden tour in Houston Texas, zone 9a
@JosTXGarden
Here is the rest of the article by Nancy Denmark about monarch butterflies. The beginning of this article is in the description of my March 5, 2023 video. (Many many thanks to Nancy for permission to include her article!)
Once gardeners understand the negative aspects of growing tropical milkweed, they’re usually quite ready to head to their favorite garden center and buy some native milkweeds. When they can’t find any native milkweeds being sold, “Why?” is the next question. “The demand is certainly there! Why can’t growers and retailers meet this demand and need?” That leads to the need to learn more about the common growth habits of native milkweeds, and why it limits their availability in the nursery trade. It’s those very different growth traits that make them the better choice for a healthy monarch population.
Growing native milkweeds successfully at the grower’s level down to the home gardener, requires understanding the typical cycles of growth, as they don’t behave like typical garden center plants. Most native milkweed species go through periods of senescence throughout the year. During senescence, they literally look dead, but are working on maturing their root system. Top growth declines down to the root level, convincing the unknowing, that they are dead. “I killed my native milkweed” is an often heard rant and chant. No, you didn’t. It will return with healthier new growth, usually bigger, better, and fuller after each period of senescence and winter dormancy. Now let’s connect the dots to how this growth habit makes them a health food for the monarchs. Remember why tropical milkweed presents a problem with the proliferation of OE and encouraging winter monarch reproduction? It does not go dormant in the winter and does not have periods of senescence like our natives do. As OE infected monarchs keep visiting the milkweed, they leave the OE spores on the plants and OE continually builds up to high levels without the milkweed’s “play dead” time. Each time a native milkweed regrows from the root level, it provides fresh clean growth with no OE. New growth = Clean growth! Now let’s circle back to the nursery trade and view it from their perspective. No one will buy a plant when it looks dead, and therein lies the greatest issue of availability.
When you do see native milkweeds in the nurseries, support those efforts and buy them. Sing their praises and let them know it is much appreciated. The independently owned niche nurseries are the most likely to make the commitment to selling them, while being transparent about whether the plants are pesticide free. They sell fast because the supply does not meet the demand. There are also reputable online sources for buying native milkweed plants. When these native plants are for sale, they may not be very showy. I like to remind people they are buying a root system, that will continue to mature at the soil level, whether top growth is visible or not. Establishing native milkweeds in the home garden is a long term commitment to contribute to a healthy migratory monarch population. We must learn to trust in the periods of disappearance and returning new growth, remembering that fresh growth is clean growth. Another option to establish native milkweeds is to learn to grow them from seed.
While we only need to supply milkweed for monarchs during the spring migration months, the rest of the year we need to work on getting the native milkweeds established, so the plants have time to mature and return with fresh new growth in time for the next spring migration.
To learn more about all the milkweed species native to Texas, explore this online guide provided by Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. https://tpwd.texas.gov/publications/pwdpubs/media/pwd_rp_w7000_1803.pdf
About the author: Nancy Denmark is a local butterfly gardening enthusiast, dedicated to teaching about our local butterflies, the host and nectar plants to attract them, and the array of insects that makeup a healthy ecosystem in the home garden. After learning a proven native milkweed seed propagation method developed by Barbara Keller Willy, Nancy has been committed to teaching the method under Barbara’s continued tutelage. Using this method, Nancy has successfully grown hundreds of native milkweeds to establish her own monarch habitat that now supports a healthy migratory monarch population.
20 Comments
I'm from league city. Love seeing Texas gardens. ❤️
That "weedy thing" is a tick seed Coreopsis. Usually pretty yellow flowers and seed heads that are full of seeds that are the size/shape of ticks. Re-seeds itself easily.
Just an FYI I had Evening Primrose get loose in my flower bed. I had to dig the whole bed up to get rid of them. I still have to go through the beds like a crazy person to keep eradicating them. They spread by very thin deep runners and just pulling them up won't get rid of them. All that being said, I let a few Primrose come up in areas that are not near my flower beds. The pollinators love them … but I really have to watch them.
I am about two hours north of you and my garden is about two weeks behind yours. I watch all of your videos very inspiring.
And hello to Mrs Doubtfire
Oh and …. look up Southern Blue Flag iris and see if that looks like your iris.
Your garden is such a delight. Enjoy listening to your Texas voice as you describe everything. Thank you for sharing.
Hi! Your garden is beautiful! It's wonderful to see a garden channel from my area. I grew up in Houston and now live in Sugar Land. As I was watching I thought, that looks like the Rice University area or West U. I lived there for 9 years. Anyway, I love Garden Answer and Claus Dalby and Linda Vater but their garden conditions are quite different from the Gulf coast. We have heat, humidity, hurricanes and arctic blasts and, mosquitos. Anyway, I love seeing a garden with ideas I can put into practice in my garden. I am so happy to have discovered your channel today! Your garden and garden cat, Mrs. Doubtfire, are lovely!
How do you keep your fountain clean? Do you add anything to the water to keep clean?
I love your garden. And I love long garden pretty videos!! I am in ntx area so some things slowly coming back! I am so excited for spring.. I got some coral nymph salvia seeds too dying for it to hurry and come up!!! Love the blue shoes haha.. have a beautiful blessed day 🙏 💕
Jo, did your big pentas survive the freeze?
Thank you Jo!! Absolutely love seeing your garden! The ivy geranium in pink is going to be amazing…Poppies are so pretty…I tried last year for the first time…Dropped the seeds in the snow and got 5 babies then I did a bad thing and tried to give them space between each other by delicately moving them…No good, they died…I must of killed the tap root…I didn’t try again this year..
The weed in question reminds me of a Bachelor Button.
Just north of you in Dallas, do geraniums like full sun or some shade in the summer?
Hi Jo, I love your garden and have neighbor envy as I too live in Houston. Can you share any local resources for favorite nurseries, landscapers, and gardening organizations that are very helpful? Keeping up a garden such as yours can sometimes be overwhelming, especially after our freezes then droughts them storms, flooding, etc. I do watch some of the same you tubers mentioned previously! Thanks for the inspiration!
Your garden is so beautiful, I am here in the south, El Paso, and most of my plants are barely waking up.
Hi Jo, your videos are never long enough! Isn’t it astonishing and wonderful to see everything coming back to life already? I did have to chuckle at Mrs Doubtfire getting comfortable in your grasses, it’s always lovely to see her and a bonus guest lizard.
I love that you keep all kinds of plants to see what they turn into! I agree that one of the self seeded plants looked very much like a hardy geranium (if only I could grow my favourite Johnson’s Blue here). Also interests me that you call your geranium Ivy geraniums. I’ve not heard them called that before, only pelagoniums, or geraniums for short. I have a big pot of hot pink geraniums and I shall have to see how they do, it seems crazy to me that it can get too hot for them here as in Spain and France they seem to thrive in the hot, dry sun with pretty poor soil. Thank you for the tip about Turk’s Cap too. I have two shaded patches where I might try them. I did the same thing as you today too, went shopping and bought two little plants because I can’t stop 😂. So enjoyed your tour and talk again, thank you ☺️
Hi from Corpus.Found you from Gulf Coast Butterfly Gardening . Both you have beautiful gardens. Have a blessed day
Hi Jo, I too like a few other commentors have just found your You Tube channel. It's delightful to find another gardener in my Houston area that focuses on native plants for a butterfly garden. I recently moved within my same Houston area and I am slowly building my garden areas over the past 2 years. Your garden tours in a more established garden helps me with ideas for future planting. I am especially interested in the results of intermingling roses with other perennials so it's great to see the beautiful results in your garden. I read the comments on local garden sources many of which I have used. I am curious what sources have you used to mail order plants? I have used the Antique Rose Emporium with good luck. Any suggests you or the community users have is appreciated.
Your garden looks so lovely! It’s a welcome bit of spring for me in the NC mountains. We are enduring rain and temps in the 40s today and going into the 20s the next few nights. Your mystery seedling looks like either coreopsis or centaurea to me, though centaurea foliage is usually more silver. Fun to find out! I did not find your video to be too long. Love to see other’s gardens! Thank you!
I like that Gulf coast penstemon, where'd you get it?
I pulled up my "Big Blue" salvia. I planted them in March of 2021, and they went through their first winter without being damaged, but this spring, it looked like parts of the clumps had died. I don't know if that was due to the low temps this past winter or not. I have some "Big Blue" seedlings I could have replaced them with, but I also have some seedlings of Verbena bonariensis "Vanity". The verbena won out for that spot. In any case, "Big Blue" is very easy to grow from seed.
Love the video! Am inspired! I think I’ll plant some Turks cap in my shaded front yard!
Beautiful!!!!! I'm so jealous of your zone 9 garden. I'm in 8a. We are expecting 9 hours or so of upper 20s tonight!!!!!!!!!! Our false spring really teased us.