Growing a Garden for the Bees, Butterflies & Birds

How to grow a dense stand of native plants that are good for the pollinators, the caterpillars, the insects and the soil

This is a story of my garden, as portrayed by recent pictures. In this tour, I would like to share some of my plants, my methods and my goals.

My aspirations include the following:

1. I want to capture all the rainfall I can and store it in my soil, my plants and my organic matter, such as dead wood and wood chips

2. I want to grow a plant community that is as thick and dense as possible.

3. I want to grow a diverse native plant community.

4. I want to improve the soil as much as possible, which means adding as much carbon as possible and as much soil biology as possible

5. I want to create as much habitat as I can for bees, butterflies and birds

Note that each of these five goals support all the rest.

1. When I capture the rainfall, that supports all forms of life above and below ground.

2. When I grow a dense plant community, that helps capture rainfall, improve the soil and create habitat for wildlife.

3. When I grow a diverse native plant community, this helps improve the soil and capture rainfall, as well as providing habitat for bees, butterflies and birds.

4. When I improve the soil, this benefits the plants and everything that lives in the soil and everything that eats the plants

5. When I provide habitat for bees, butterflies and birds, they do their part to propagate my plants, by pollinating them and spreading the seeds.

I have 2/8 of an acre in Urban Louisville. I say 2/8 of an acre because I live on ⅛ acre and also own a ⅛ acre vacant lot three doors down.

I sometimes call the vacant lot “Catalpa Grove” because it has a row of big, beautiful catalpa trees on one side.

In this article, I will share how I am trying to create the most diversity with the least amount of effort, using seed balls.

But first …

This is a recent picture of my vacant lot.

The white bloom toward the upper right is hibiscus. Most of the green you see here is swamp marigold, an annual that can grow to about 6’ tall and 5’ wide in its one growing season. I like how swamp marigold fills up the space with leafy green matter, with all the benefits of leafy green matter, including photosynthesis, which stores carbon in the ground and enriches my soil.

Here is the vacant lot from another angle.

From this angle, it looks a bit messy, but it will look better when it grows in density. Maximizing density is a major goal, because that maximizes photosynthesis, habitat and carbon storage.

Consistent with my goal of creating habitat, here is a hanging thief, in my front yard.

The hanging thief is an insect predator which catches its prey in mid-flight.

Here is a green June beetle on a common evening primrose.

This is part of my backyard.

Once upon a time, there was a path right down the middle, but these plants took it over.

This is my latest batch of seed balls.

I made seed balls because it turns out to be an easier way to create plant diversity. I had a bunch of seeds left over from last year. Rather than plant them in pots and water the pots, I’ve decided to roll them up into mud balls and place them on the ground, as pictured below.

I placed them on top of the ground, but not on top of the wood chips. I place them where the roots will make contact with the soil when they sprout. If they sprout and appear to be on top of the wood chips, I will clear away the wood chips and place them on the ground, so they can make contact with the soil.

Here is a bucket that I use to carry around the seed balls when planting them.

Here is the bucket of soil I used to make the seed balls. Just add water and seeds.

I searched for the best soil in my landscape. You can tell the quality of the soil by how dark it is. Quality soil is soil that is dark brown, because it is rich with carbon, which is black.

Now for some random pictures of plants …

This is frog fruit.

It is a vine and a ground cover. This serves the purpose of density and diversity, because it fills up spaces that would otherwise not be filled up with green plants.

This is boneset.

A friend gave me a tray with 30 plants. I gave away some and planted some. For efficiency, I typically dig one hole and plant 3-5 plants. This saves both time and space. If all plants survive then they can grow together.

Here, you see three hibiscus plants, the ones with the heart-shaped leaves and the five-leaved Virginia creeper sits in the middle.

Here is an area right outside my backdoor and looking toward the back of my 20’ x 220’ lot.

I planted some of these plants this year, such as hibiscus and cantaloup.

I planted some of them in previous years, such as ironweed and goldenrod.

Some of them are growing wild, such as Virginia creeper and poke weed.

The wood chips help me control weeds by covering them up. The wood chips also absorb rainfall, thus conserving moisture. And over the course of time, the wood chips decompose, making rich soil.

This is a specimen of my swamp marigold.

Some of the leaves are shriveled, presumably because of a nutrient deficiency in the soil. Over time, the plants will improve the soil. And over the course of time, I expect to see plant health improve, as the soil health improves.

Here is another shot of the shriveled leaves.

This is a shot of my backyard, looking toward the front.

Until this year, there was a wood chip path right up the middle of this photo, but the plants grew over it, and I decided to let them grow instead of cutting them back. The plants that grew over the path include cup plant, white crownbeard and pumpkin.

Below is the same blocked path from another angle. The photo includes the cup plant (yellow blooms).

The left half of the photo includes common evening primrose (top left), poke weed (middle left) and partridge pea (bottom left).

This is an area underneath a spreading black maple tree in the front of my vacant lot.

These plants are struggling, apparently because of poor soil. Here again, over time, I expect that the plants will improve the soil and the soil will return the favor by capturing rainfall and growing healthy plants.

Plants pictured here include white snakeroot and jewelweed.

Here is a closeup of a white snakeroot, which thrives in sun or shade, but not here, presumably because of bad soil.

.Here are two black cherry seedlings.

Black cherry feeds countless birds and insects and ranks number two in providing food for caterpillars. Oaks rank number one.

I don’t pull “weeds” like this, because they are putting carbon in the soil and building biological diversity both above and below ground.

This is the right (western) edge of my vacant lot.

The left of this picture represents the sunny area of my vacant lot. My goal is for it to be completely green by August of 2026. The seed balls are a key prong in my strategy, because it results in many more plants with less effort, as compared with transplanting seedlings from pots.

Here is another angle on the sunny spot of my vacant lot (Catalpa Grove).

On the left, you see Jerusalem artichoke, transplanted from a wild patch in my backyard. On the upper left, you see common evening primrose, all descended from a single plant obtained two years ago.

Jerusalem artichoke and common evening primrose are two plants that reproduce rapidly, so they do a lot of the work for me. They plant themselves, so I don’t have to.

When you’re trying to fill up a space fast, you want a few species that spread rapidly. Other rapid spreaders include yellow wingstem, common milkweed, swamp marigold, cup plant and partridge pea.

I’ve met one plant that spreads a bit too rapidly for my taste. That is Canada goldenrod. It is a good native plant that feeds a lot of caterpillars and pollinators, but it is just a bit too aggressive for my taste. It tends to not play nicely with others and tends to eliminate plants that I want to keep.

This is Virginia dayflower, obtained from a plant swap in June.

I spend almost nothing on plants, because I get them from friends, which is a benefit of being part of a community of people who love and share native plants.

This shot includes frog fruit, a vine and a ground cover (bottom center)

You see swamp marigold in the upper right. Swamp marigold fills up the space with green plant matter, which means a lot of photosynthesis is going on. And swamp marigold is an annual. It’s amazing how much green matter and biomass it produces during its one growing season.

This is a picture of the sunny area of my vacant lot.

The tan blooms are Joe Pye weed, which feed the monarch butterflies this time of year. Today, I saw a monarch butterfly that sported the brightest colors I ever recall seeing on a monarch. I assumed that it was a brand new butterfly.

Monarchs go through four generations per year. Three of them last one month in the summer. The other generation lasts nine months and migrates to Mexico in the fall and back to the US in the spring.

Here is a monarch butterfly on my Joe Pye weed in the front yard yesterday.

And here is the video.

Video - Google Photos

Here is a video from today of a monarch on Joe Pye weed.

Video - Google Photos

This is an area where I cut away the swamp marigold, so I could lay down some seed balls.

Upon reflection, I have decided that cutting down the swamp marigold will not cause my seed balls to germinate, because most of them will not germinate until next year anyway. Better to monitor the seed balls for germination in the spring and then cut the swamp marigold and other plants as needed to expose the seedlings to sunshine.

This photo includes two rapid spreaders: Common evening primrose and yellow wingstem.

This area is lucky to be planted with anything, because it does not get full sun, and I had doubted that sun-loving plants could thrive here. But I have discovered that plants that thrive in full sun also can do pretty well in about 6 hours of daily sunshine. This area gets 6-8 hours of afternoon sunshine.

Also, this area had been covered by a foot of wood chips. So that’s another reason I had procrastinated planting here. The third reason is that the soil is poor and hard to dig in because of tree roots.

Here is another angle on the same area.

This is the last major planting before I started to make seed balls. On the lower right is a seed ball. I have decided that seed balls are much easier than transplanting.

Here is my latest batch of seed balls, about 75 of them. It took about 45 minutes, once I gathered up a bucket of dirt, a bucket of water and a bag of seeds and mixed them all together.

Here is another angle on the sunny area of Catalpa Grove (my vacant lot).

On the bottom left, it looks rough, because I’ve cut down the swamp marigold to make way for seed balls to catch the sunlight.

In the top middle of this picture, you see yellow blooms and purple blooms. The yellow is cup plant, and the purple is ironweed. This is a nice color combination, and I expect to have more of the same next year.

My only complaint is that they are falling over and so may appear unkempt. That’s another reason that I like density. As this stand of plants becomes more dense, more of the plants will stand up straight.

When a plant falls over, that does not mean it is unhealthy. In fact, when an herbaceous wildflower falls over, this extends the range of its seeds and therefore its progeny. That’s exactly what I saw last year when my blooming ten-foot-tall cup plant fell over. The plant lived and went to seed, and dozens of seedlings grew in the very spot where it fell.

This picture shows two seed balls, in a spot where I had cut down some swamp marigold.

It remains to be seen whether any of the seeds will germinate this year. Since each seed ball contains at least 100 seeds, it is reasonable to expect that the seeds will germinate over the course of the next 2-5 years or more, especially since the weather will cause the seed balls to crumble over time.

So I see the seed balls as an investment in the “seed bank” of my property. In nature, seed banks accumulate naturally, and then a seed will germinate when it is decades or centuries old, when conditions are finally right.

Just like this milkweed plant.

This tiny milkweed plant germinated a week ago. It had been overshadowed by jewelweed. I like jewelweed, but the jewelweed that was in this spot was not thriving, and I wanted to plant some mountainmint in this area. So I pulled the jewelweed and laid it down on its side, to serve as mulch and return nutrients to the soil.

A few days later, this little surprise popped up. I speculate that this milkweed plant emerged from the root of a nearby milkweed.

Here is the wood pile in the front of my vacant lot.

I needed more space in the sun, but this pile of wood chips was in the way.

So I took my pitchfork and hard rake, scooped out a trench and threw most of the wood chips on top of the pile. The trench then became a place where I could plant.

But instead of planting, I can place a seed ball on top of the soil. That is SO much easier than planting, because this soil is compacted and also filled with rocks and tree roots.

It remains to be seen how many of the seeds will germinate and after they germinate how many of the plants will thrive.

But there’s no better way to improve the soil than to have a diversity of living roots in the ground.

By the way, I haven’t told you what plant species are in my seed balls.

Here they are:

• Ironweed

• White wingstem

• Yellow wingstem

• Bee balm

• Brown-eyed Susan

• Black-eyed Susan

• Gray headed coneflower

• Swamp marigold

• Cup plant

• New England aster

• Frost aster

• Wrinkleleaf goldenrod

This is my “party animal” seed mix because these species are all rapid spreaders. I have another mix of high value seeds that include purple coneflower, rattlesnake master, partridge pea, Illinois bundleflower and Joe Pye weed. These are plants that need a little more of my help to be sufficiently abundant.

This concludes our tour.

Please share your comments and questions in the space below.