The Key to a Successful Gardening Season in Color
It may be cold right now, but the new gardening season is just around the corner. Soon you will see the starts of your snowdrops and grape hyacinths peeking out of the ground, and it will be time to plant your annuals and check your perennials to see what is coming up and what needs to be replaced. As you sit down to plan your garden for this year, you may want to consider some new ideas to spice up your home and garden.
Add Butterflies, Bumble bees, and Birds
Not all the color and beauty in your garden comes from flowers. Butterflies and bees (not necessarily the enemy) visit gardens, adding life and a brilliant spectrum to the scene. In order to attract butterflies, you will want a wide range of colors. The butterfly bush is named for its ability to attract these beautiful creatures, but other flowers are effective as well, including impatiens, verbena, and snapdragons.
Of course, before a butterfly becomes a butterfly, it is a caterpillar, and your garden should include plants that provide food and shelter for caterpillars as well. Some great options include parsley, verbena, and milkweed.
Bees look for colors that tell them they will find pollen in abundance. The best colors to attract bees are purples, blues, and dark pinks. While families with small children may take steps to avoid inviting these buzzing creatures into their yards, many gardeners understand why bees are great for their flowers and their vegetables. In fact, the best way to increase your yield from your vegetables is to plant them among your flowers. The flowers attract the bees that then land on the vegetables blooms as well, helping pollinate the plants and boosting your yield.
Bird lovers looking to attract a wide range of wild birds this gardening season will be thrilled with the results when they choose flowers that also attract them. Sunflowers, with their huge pods full of seeds, are an obvious choice to bring the birds flocking to your yard. Additionally, birds love cosmos, snapdragons, and zinnias.
Choose the Colors you Love
Planning a garden that will attract these beautiful flying creatures will give you lots and lots of color options. Once you have decided on some varieties you like, you can be creative with color combinations. While matching colors in your wardrobe may be important, matching colors in your garden is not. This gardening season, build up the courage to choose colors that you like because you like them, not because they will agree with a certain color scheme. This is never an issue in a field of wild flowers; do not feel you must plan your gardening season any differently.