The last few weeks my wife and I have been cleaning up and mulching the area we call the Wild Garden. It’s planted with flowers and other plants that are attractive to butterflies, hummingbirds and pollinators. It’s been quite a while since I shared any photos from this area. Here’s how it looked back in 2009, a couple of years after it was established.
Wild Garden – October, 2009
And a photo of how it looked in 2016.
Wild Garden in 2016
Here’s how it looked earlier this week, partially weeded and mulched.
Wild Garden in 2020
Some of the same plants from 2009 are still around, like bee balm.
red bee balm
And the Ratibida pinnata (aka grey headed coneflower) from 2016 is still going strong.
Ratibida pinnata
There’s still several of the purple coneflowers too (Echinacea purpurea), and they are blooming now.
Purple Coneflower
Other plants like allium Millenium were moved to the Sun Garden. And the Autumn Joy sedum is gone since we got tired of the deer eating it. The purple leaf Picolette sedum is still there, and the pink blossoms are about ready to open.
sedum Picolette
The native Joe Pye Weed is also starting to bloom. It’s not a real showy plant, but it is a favorite of butterflies.
Joe Pye Weed
The Brown Eyed Susan (Rudbeckia triloba) plants are also blooming now. It’s taller than the Black Eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta) which is also blooming.
Brown Eyed Susan
And towering up high is the bronze fennel. The feathery leaves are food for the swallowtail butterfly caterpillars.
Bronze Ffennel
I hope you have enjoyed this look at our Wild Garden here in late July. We have several new plants we’re going to add this fall, including Stoke’s Aster, Coreopsis, another Penstemon, more bee balm and a blue-flowered Salvia. I’ll be back soon with more happenings here at Happy Acres!
Just gorgeous!! Doesn’t it take so much restraint to keep things manageable? My eyes are always bigger than my ability to care for the garden. It’s lovely, Dave.
It does take restraint. We are actually reducing the size of this garden a bit, but it’s still large enough to keep us busy!
I’m sure the wild life loves this area,. Unfortunately echinacea doesn’t like our soil.
When the bee balm was in full bloom it was covered in bees every day.
That’s a pretty wild garden, both now and back when it looked REALLY wild.
I love the look of this deliberately planted “wild garden”. So much pollen and nectar for the bees!