Heather, what an awesome place you have and what a great challenge! Fall is still great to do some wildflower seeding-cosmos, sunflowers, marigolds, that butterflies love. This will give you a start until you get an opportunity to guage what your ultimate outcome or wishes may be. Slowly add butterfly loving perrenials, shrubs and plants. I envy you! Beautiful space you have. Please keep us posted on your developments.

heather,
start small. find a spot that gets a fair amount of afternoon shade and lots of morning sun. i am a big fan of the no-till, mulch method -- cover the existing vegetation with lots of newspapers or cardboard, and cover it all with lots and lots of organic material -- grass clippings, leaves, free trash mulch from the local dump, whatever. it REALLY DOES NOT MATTER, so long as it breaks down and provides a buffer for your plants. (i wrote a bit about my own butterfly garden start in the link below).

start with some large shrubby-trees like cassia, hamelia patens, porterweed, vitex, pawpaws, florida anise, etc. these will provide centerpieces and stability in your garden.

then add lots of flowers... start small, and expand slowly as you acquire and propagate and get a handle on what does well for you.

your best option is to attend trades and fairs, where the prices are low or free. everyone has their own favorites, but let me name some that are perennial and do well in my garden and attract lots of wildlife...
- vitex
- Hamelia patens
- Russelia rotundifolia (don't bother with other species)
- lots of pentas
- bronze and florence fennel
- milkweed
- porterweed
- cassia (any and all kinds)
- salvia (there are literally scores of species -- get them through trades)
- roses, esp. pink old-garden types
- Helianthus debilis (dune sunflower)

if you're coming to the october swap in orlando, i'll bring a ton of seedlings, cuttings, etc...

Here is a link that might be useful: newspapers and mulch

Heather, what a great space you have. You will have a superb butterfly garden, I'm sure. I don't know how bent you are on having just FL natives. There are lots of FL-friendly plants that were mentioned above that are some of the best attractants. To those, I would add lots of jatropha, a couple of duranta, tithonia rotundifolia, dwarf powderpuff, and zinnias in the spring. If you want to make it a hummer haven also, don't forget the firespike (red and lavender). FYI, pentas and firespike can be propagated very easily, so keep on propagating.

By the way, I would do the beds just like ill. That method has worked the best for me in creating all my beds. Have fun!

Anna

yes, absolutely, anna -- spicy jatropha. i can't believe i forgot it! butterflies CAN NOT RESIST IT!!! zebra longwings line up in the morning. it's totally dfrought resistant and, it's easy to propagate from cuttings!

i'm bringing a bunch to the orlando swap... i don't know where heather is, but here in deland/n orlando, zinnias bloom their dear hearts out all summer for me. they start in april and they're still going strong now in august.

i need to try dwarf powderpuffs... can one start them from cuttings?

You will love your Bfly garden! I am working on my third! They REALLY REALLY love Verbena Bonariensis,zinnias and porterweed as well as those the others have discussed.Click on my pic to see my Bfly album .Put it on slideshow and relax!{{gwi:926699}}

I agree with all the great advice you're getting about the kinds of plants to get/grow. You've got a great space and since it's visible from your great room you'll enjoy the view. I can't tell you how many times I've run outdoors when I see a new (or old) butterfly flutter by. Better visual entertainment than TV.

Here's my 2 thoughts:
-you need to run a garden hose/drip irrigation to your garden spot to get everything started. This rainy season (for us) has been a drought. Don't water every night but 2 times a week water deeply so the roots go deep.

-for instant pleasure put one plant that is a larval host in a pot closer to the door/window. It's so much fun to see the BF's lay eggs as they are attracted to their host plant. Then you get to watch the little eggs become caterpillars. I started with tropical milkweed from HD that came with caterpillars eating away.

My latest expedition out of town got me a dutchmans pipe that had eggs on it of the Gold-rim polydamas butterfly (Native Plants nursery in Sarasota). I never had this BF in my yard before and now I have many every day. Just make sure you have a lot of their host plants because they will eat them to the ground and look for more.

Butterfly gardening is addictive.

P.S. Buy parsley for the black swallowtails, milkweed for monarchs. Sow dill and fennel seeds now, they grow all winter for me.

Good luck.

Denise

I would set up like ill's suggested except I would also add in some composted horse or cow manure. Also you might want to put some soaker hoses under the mulch.

Some native plants you could try are:
coral honeysuckle (it would look great growing on the fence in your first picture.)
firebush
tropical sage salvia
scrub mint
swamp sunflower
Liatris (gayfeather)
beach sunflower
There are several neat looking native milkweeds but they don't grow well in anything but un-improved sandy soils.

What a wonderful spot! Reminds me of a 'nature trail just north of Lakeland' with bike path through.. FILLED with all sorts of butterflies..
Goldenpond.. Amazing photos. I'm saving your link for future ID's.. Thanks so much!

You have the PERFECT spot for a natural looking butterfly garden, meadow-style. I love it, and can't wait to watch your progress, Heather.

I never have the patience to wait for the smother method to work in a bed, possibly because I'm not doing it right. (Ill, I need more help from you in that regard...my front yard bed where I want to put the mushroom compost has a lot of puny, scraggly grassy stuff that needs to go.) I would probably start with a heavy duty rake and scuffle hoe in that sandy area and begin to clear a small patch about 4 or 5 feet square or so. I'd put down my compost, rake it in and start planting there. Then maybe I'd try the smother method across the rest of the area, if I had actually learned the correct way to do it by then.

But no matter how you prepare, just go for it, and start filling up that area with good nectar and host plants.

In your last photo, I could envision a long, curvy bed along the left side, coming down towards the cleared pathway area (is that going to stay a path/road?) and looking very natural, as though the flowers had sprung up
along the edges of the woodland all by themselves.

Yes to all the wonderful plants mentioned above, but one word of caution. When buying HOST plants, you have to be sure that they have not been sprayed at the nursery, before arriving in the stores. I once bought some fantastic looking (that should have been a CLUE) milkweed at Home Depot for my larva which had eaten almost all of mine, and within ten minutes of them moving over to the new plants, every single caterpillar was dead on the ground! Good sources for pesticide free host plants include Lukas nursery, Biosphere, and Seminole Springs Herb & Antique Roses. I'm sure there are others. But you never know at the big stores. They are great for some things, but not necessarily for host butterfly plants. (Except for the herbs, of course, which are sold for human consumption, so presumably are safe.)

Good luck with it all, and please keep us posted!

Marcia

Passionvine! Don't forget passionvine. That gave me my very first butterflies--gulf fritillaries--which are always present now. You could put that in a pot but the vine grows so long that you'll want to put it in the ground with support (I made a tripod of 5' bamboo sticks.)
I've heard the red passionflower isn't good for the caterpillars so maybe stick with the purple. I have Lavender Lady for the frits and have just gotten my first zebras after planting Passiflora suberosa.

Naplesgardener, as we were discussing somewhere else, there IS a red passionvine that is safe for butterfly larva. It's called Lady Margaret and is a lovely wine red with a light center. It's gorgeous! But the HUGE scarlet one you see so much of is toxic to the cats, so you are right to avoid that one. I've had Amethyst and the native one, and both were big attractors for gulf frits AND zebra longwings. But the native one was the better of the two, as far as amount of eggs laid and larva raised.

Marcia

Thank you for all of the great suggestions! We do have an irrigation system installed out there already, in preparation for the garden, so at least we have that. What I'd love to do is rent a pickup truck (our two Jettas won't cut the mustard) and pick up some mushroom compost to get my beds going. We'll see how much money the husband gives me to play with :)

Goldenpond, the butterfly slideshow was just lovely.

I'm in the Orlando area (Clermont), but I'd feel kind of bad going to the swap, since I have nothing to swap as of yet! Maybe I'll just go and meet people and discuss gardening :)

Thank you again for all of the suggestions!
Heather W

Here is a link that might be useful: Our ICF Home Construction Journal

heather,
there a plenty of people who are in the opposite situation -- we have tons of stuff to give away, and don't really want anything. we're in it for the community thing.

pls come to the next trade! you'll be welcomed and leave with a jetta full of flowers...

Heather ~ what a wonderful canvas for a butterfly paradise. Look forward to seeing pictures as your garden grows.

Goldenpond ~ your buterfly slideshow was fantastic. Where can you get seeds for fennel and does the flame vine grow from seed also? Your pictures inspire me to get to work.

FlowerLady

Flowerlady,I havent had many blossoms lately on the flamevine. We bought it potted to hide a telephone pole in my yard(HOW DARE THEY?)
Im not sure when bloom time is but it is not now.I bought the bronze fennel at gardenfest in Vero Beach,the BST adore it and I love its licorice scent!They eat it down alot and I don't get any seeds.The dill though, grew enormous,over 5 ft and was covered with caterpillars.On July 5 I had 5 BST drying their wings when my married son arrived. Even he was impressed.I just scattered the dill seeds from that plant. It has bit the dust,for the summer so I have little ones and parsley.
Zinnia Elegans are very cheap to buy as seeds and Parks usually has a seed sale A dollar a pack or something.Check out their site.Zinnia and milkweed and cosmo seeds are inexpensive fillers. Also,have you gotten on the butterfly forum? A poster just sent me some swan milkweed seeds.
My yard is just alive with butterflies and I even see them dancing outside my windows when I have to be indoors.

You may want to get a few books on butterflies so you can start making your plant lists:) I have a couple of reference books that I keep handy and I try to continously add plants. It has taken me a few years but if you step out in my backyard within about a minute you can see a half dozen different types of butterflies.

If you go to the swaps you can ask everyone what butterfly plants they have and that is a great way to start. Pretty soon you will be thinking in quantities as well as different plants. I am to the point where I think I need about 40 more milkweeds, 20 more pentas etc and pipevines:)

Biosphere is a great nursery for butterfly plants. They have an amazing variety and just about every color of porterweed I have ever heard of!

Pat