Planting the butterfly garden

August 2025

If you have read earlier posts, you know I am not the best at design and this is the first time I have had such a large garden. I already know that I have chosen too many different flowering plants to meet the aesthetic garden designers recommend, with a few select plants in repeating drifts. I can only take comfort in the idea that the butterflies will not care.

I took a day off work a couple of months ago and drove south for a good hour to get to Joy Plants, kids in the back seat because it was the school holidays, and I got to drool, albeit in the nippy wind, at their perennials collection. They have more stock than they mention on their website, so me grabbing two or three plants from the "out of stock" lines was wonderful. Because they have been raising plants since the 1960s, many plants are the older types, not the low-nectar hybrids (although they do have modern lines as well.) No wonder they have other butterfly gardeners coming to them.

Kōtukutuku / Tree fuchsia flower

I was most excited about getting two kōtukutuku that I want to plant along the stream. One even had a flower on it. These are tree fuchsia - elegant trees with peeling bark that like a good gully - with flowers that have blue pollen to coat the heads of the tui. Okay, not technically for the butterfly garden, but definitely a wildlife winner and they have been sooooo hard to find locally.

I also picked up sedums, stokesia, solidago, coreopsis, achilleas, turkish sage and some other native plants I had not been able to source elsewhere. I look forward to going back when its warmer to appreciate all the plants they have at the nursery.

Stokesia flower

In order to make the garden as good as my limited skills could make it, I made a list of all the plants I had both new, hanging around in pots and in the garden already. I noted their dimensions, whether they can grow in some shade and what colour they are. I laid them all out where I thought they would be planted and fiddled as I considered each aspect of their natures. For a garden that I said would be blue/purple/yellow/orange, I've got a lot of pink around too. Oh well, again, I can't imagine the pollinators will worry. Whilst scent, shape, and pollen and nectar levels all play a part in attracting different pollinators, colour is also a factor. Pink is less attractive than the other colours to bees, hoverflies and butterflies, but it won't stop them taking the nectar. The camellia hedge, which is still flowering, continues to attract the bees and they are white and pink.

Camellia "Fairy Blush" flowers

I have had to move some of the plants I put in last year, because the front of the border has moved out. I've also put in roses I've moved from the courtyard, where they were not getting the light and air they need to do well (they are pink too).

Then it was down to planting all the potted flowers. The beds are easiest, because I haven't had to weed them first before planting them up. That said, the blackbirds and the rain have looked at the layer of compost and mulch over the new beds and decided it all needed shifting around, creating bare patches where the grass or other weeds have come through. Still, on the whole turning the soil and mulching has done the job of killing off the lawn and given me a blank slate to work with.

Libertia, buddleia, catmint, penstemon, mountain flax and verbena

Because the plants are all relatively new, there will be large gaps around them until they fill out, so I am going to plant annuals in between. That gave me an excuse to do more drooling over the new King Seeds and Egmont Seeds catalogues. Having bought some seeds from them in autumn, following visits to the butterfly houses at Franklin Farm and West Lynn to see what plants they used, I reckoned I only needed a couple of packets. Two large orders later... I may be able to survive a shopping trip to a mall, but show me a garden centre or the like and I'm a sucker. Take all my money!

I have the first seeds of the season planted in trays. There's kakabeak, manuka, alliums, solidago, cornflowers, cosmos, calendula, poppies, guara and nigella. Some of those need cold stratifying and with the hail the other day, I'm hoping they will be fooled that I really live on the South Island.

I am really struggling without a covered outdoor area though. The rain is getting into the propagators even when closed, and of course that means the seed mix is saturated, rather than damp. I don't know if this has already compromised some of what I've planted. We'll see. I just have to remember to empty them all after each downpour.

Kakabeak sprouting! Now not to kill them...

I cannot show a picture of the completed, planted up garden, because I haven't finished yet. I've also had a panic that it is the end of winter and I have yet to cut back all the hydrangea that lurk in the shadier parts of the garden that I don't bother mentioning. At least the roses have been pruned. There are still some natives to plant in the bush as well, especially the climbers. It's going to be a busy spring.