By Lisa Allen Landscape • • • • • • • 0 Comments

Attracting Butterflies and Birds to Your Landscape

The best, most successful lawns and landscapes are the result of a partnership between you and your landscape professionals. Why? Because from the planning stage to the maintenance stage, working together to create, plant, and maintain an outdoor space you love will be a combination of one-time events (like building a waterfall centerpiece in a backyard garden, for example) and daily habits (like watering your flower beds at the right times, so they continue to thrive).

There’s a third party that plays a vital role in the health and vitality of your outdoor space, as well: nature itself. This is especially true if you want your lawn and garden to be filled with butterflies and birds. Read on to learn why.

Why Attract Butterflies and Birds to your Landscape?

Butterflies and birds aren’t just beautiful and fun to observe. Both can fulfill a vital role in keeping your outdoor space healthy. They do this by feeding on the nectar of various flowers and plants. When they feed, they also help pollinate, which helps flowers and even some vegetable gardens thrive.

Hummingbirds and bees, especially, are crucial to the pollination of various plants and flowers. By providing a space that’s safe for them to land and feed, you’re ensuring that pollination will continue to happen—and that your outdoor space, by extension, will continue to grow.

The Perfect Pollination Spaces

Birds and butterflies need flowers and plants that provide nectar. In the Kansas City and Johnson County area, native nectar plants include rose verbena, columbines, bee balms, milkweeds, clovers, and Indigo Bush.

These plants need lots of sunlight to bloom and survive, so be sure to plan a space that gets full sun from mid-morning to afternoon. A sunny spot is also important for butterflies, because butterflies are cold-blooded and require the sun’s heat to survive.

Make Your Landscape a Home for the Caterpillars

While butterflies are beautiful, their life span is surprisingly short. In fact the average life span of an adult butterfly is two weeks or less. This means that if you want to truly make your outdoor space—or a portion of it—home to butterflies, you must also make it a home to the baby version of butterflies: caterpillars.

In a perfect world, an adult butterfly will lay her eggs on a host plant—and that plant isn’t a flower. In fact, the only food for Monarch butterflies is Milkweed. Black Swallowtails feed on members of the carrot family (think Queen Anne’s Lace, fennel, parsley, and Golden Alexanders).

Want to learn more about creating an outdoor space that perfectly suits you and your family? We’re ready and eager  to work with you—so get in touch today!

By Lisa Allen General Information • • • • • • • • • • • 0 Comments

Did You Have a COVID Garden? What to Do Next

Did You Have a COVID Garden?

One of the results of the Coronavirus pandemic of 2020 was the rise of home and backyard gardens. Most often supplemental gardens (those used not as sole sources of food, but as supplemental supplies) and often container based rather than in-ground, these COVID gardens gave people something productive to do.

But, as COVID fatigue set in—and as temperatures plummeted during winter—the shine that these gardens once had might be a bit scuffed. If you built a garden last year and want to change things up a bit for the upcoming season, here are a few ideas to make the most of your space.

New Year, New Gardens

If you planted a garden last year by purchasing or building container gardens, you likely remember how those crops fared. Did your tomatoes grow tall and leggy but produce few fruits? Did your watermelons fizzle? Make notes about each crop you planted.  Pay attention to placement in your garden, your watering habits, and the results.

Chances are, you can rotate your crops this year to better leverage your space. If your containers are portable, consider place where you’ll get optimal sunlight; if you cannot move your containers, take some time to determine where sunlight falls in your space and for how long, then follow the guidelines set out for each crop. For example, tomatoes have different sunlight needs than green beans.

Consider Adding New Elements

If you know what you’re planting, whether that’s vegetables or flowers or a combination of both, and you have the space, you can consider adding other elements to your garden. Some communities reimburse homeowners for environmentally friendly garden elements, like rain barrels or butterfly gardens. You could also add a hardscape, like a patio, or a water or fire element.

Combine Garden and Outdoor Living Concepts

One outdoor trend, according to Veranda, is the return of the cutting garden. Another is a more seamless integration of outdoor and indoor spaces. You can breathe new life into your outdoor space by considering these trends. For instance, use a currently barren corner to plant zinnias or sunflowers—and then use those cuttings to decorate both your patio tables and in your indoor bouquets.

Another option is to expand your garden and add seating elements. This can be as easy as adding a bench so you can sit and enjoy the fruits of your labor, or by building an umbrellaed dining area complete with countertops and an outdoor oven.

Do you have big plans for your outdoor space? We’d love to hear about them. Share on our Facebook or shoot us an email.

 

choosing the right annuals and perennials for your olathe garden
By Lisa Allen Landscape • • • • • • • • • • • • 0 Comments

Olathe Flowers: the Difference Between Annuals and Perennials and Choosing the Right Ones

choosing the right annuals and perennials for your olathe garden

Start with Basics

It’s ok if choosing flowers for your landscape is overwhelming. There are so many choices, a rainbow of colors, and considerations that reach beyond picking what you think is pretty—like budget, the amount of time you have to tend your landscape, the composition of your soil, and what grows well in your climate.

So let’s start with the basics. First, flowers are typically organized in one of three categories at the nursery: annuals, biennials, and perennials. Here’s the difference: annuals live for one season only. Biennials live for two years. And perennials come back year after year.

Knowing this can help you decide which flowers best fit your current goals and lifestyle. For instance, if you’re planning to move soon or want to experiment with flower type and placement, annuals or biennials might be a good choice. Or, if you have settled into your dream home and know exactly how you want your landscape to look, perennials will continue to flower every year.

Remember that annuals will flower in one season, but biennials won’t. Instead, a biennial grows and stems, but doesn’t bloom. This means the flowering doesn’t happen until year two. Choosing these means you have to have patience, but the results are so often breathtaking: think of a field of poppies or Black-Eyed Susans!

Should I Plant Annuals or Perennials?

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to this question other than to say that rarely does one have to choose one over the other. There are so many considerations when it comes to choosing the right flowers for your Olathe landscape, only one of which is how often you want to replant those plants.

If you’re looking solely at how long plants will last, think about this: planting annuals has to be done more often (every year) than choosing perennials. If you’ll be in your home for more than a year or two, and you’re most concerned with not planting every year, then planting perennials might be your best option.

However, choosing annuals means you can vary your plants year to year. This means the overall look of your landscape can change more often. Weighing these considerations: the time that must be invested vs. the ability to change how your landscape looks can help you determine which plan to implement.

Why Pick Just One Flower Type?

If you aren’t steadfastly set on either planting only once (as might be the case with perennials) or being able to completely change your garden every year (as might be the case with annuals), your best option might be to plant a combination of annuals, biennials, and perennials.

Employ the Olathe Flower and Landscape Experts

No one knows what grows best in Olathe gardens like local landscape experts. Curious about which flowers grow well in the Johnson County area? Give us a call; we’d love to talk to you about your landscaping projects.