Creating a Butterfly / Hummingbird Garden

Do you like butterflies and hummingbirds?  It’s hard to find someone who doesn’t.

Hummingbird at the Living Desert in Palm Desert, CA

Over 13 years ago, I was working for a golf course management company.  At that time, I created a butterfly garden and a separate hummingbird garden, adjacent to one of the golf courses.

A few years afterward, I created another hummingbird garden at another golf course.  It was so rewarding to see the little hummers visit the flowering plants and perch up high in the Palo Verde trees.

Hummingbird Garden

So you can imagine how excited I was when I was asked to help create a new butterfly & hummingbird garden.

In fact, the site was the same hummingbird garden that I had created over 10 years ago (above).

Over the years, the plants hadn’t been replaced and it didn’t look the same as it did.

I visited the site with the person who was spearheading the new garden and we started to determine what existing plants would stay and which ones we would have removed- because this garden is to be an educational garden for the community, we needed to keep only the plants that attracted butterflies and/or hummingbirds.

The woman I was working with is a retired horticulturist in Minnesota and we had so much fun talking about ‘gardening’ and past projects.

Then I went to work on the design.  The garden will have a path and benches on either end so that people can sit and enjoy watching butterflies and hummingbirds.

Because this was to be a combination Butterfly/Hummingbird garden, I incorporated plants that would attract both.

In fact, there are many plants that attract both butterflies and hummingbirds.

Once the design and estimate was approved, it was time to come back out and mark out the path and flag for plant and boulder placement.

It was so much fun to see my old friends from my former landscape crew stop by and say “hi”.

A few days later, it was time to place the plants, which is my absolutely favorite part.

Later that same day, the landscape company came out to install the plants.

I can’t wait for you to see the finished project and show you the plant list.

**To see the finished project and plant list, click here.**

PS.  Thanks to all of you who so kindly voted for me for “Top Gardening Blog”(I came in 7th out of the 51 blogs that were nominated :-).

Noelle Johnson, aka, 'AZ Plant Lady' is a author, horticulturist, and landscape consultant who helps people learn how to create, grow, and maintain beautiful desert gardens that thrive in a hot, dry climate. She does this through her consulting services, her online class Desert Gardening 101, and her monthly membership club, Through the Garden Gate. As she likes to tell desert-dwellers, "Gardening in the desert isn't hard, but it is different."