Today we are tooting the horn of pollinator expert, Laura Jarvis, of The Butterfly Landing, in blatant attempts to get you to come to our class! Whether you carve out a special patio garden at your apartment, or plant a plot in your landscape, the more pollinator plants that we can offer our local wildlife the better our world will be.
Pollinator Gardening
It’s a fact that the habitats of our local bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, moths, etc… are going away; being taken away, actually. This fact is one of the main reasons that Laura Jarvis of The Butterfly Landing is on a mission to help educate as many people as she can about not only the importance of pollinator gardens, but also how to be successful in creating and maintaining them.
We can talk all we want about the reasons for creating pollinator gardens, but the truth is, if you don’t know where to start, or how to cultivate the garden once you have it, you’ll either get discouraged or feel like it’s a waste of time. This is why Laura feels that education must be made a huge priority and why she readily agrees to teaching classes at Rainbow Gardens. She also educates through her business Facebook page about what’s happening in real time in her butterfly gardens at The Butterfly Landing.
The Butterfly Landing grows host and nectar plants for our local wildlife and specializes in those hard-to-find native species. Besides educating the public about the importance of these plants, Laura also thrives on making them available to more and more home gardeners.
Laura is a proponent of being a great observer in the garden. She attributes much of her success to her years of hands on experience; literally hands on! You’ll often find her with a wayward caterpillar in her hand, gently transporting it to a food source. The undersides of the leaves of her plants are inspected daily to look for butterfly eggs. When she’s planted a different variety of a host species, Laura watches diligently to see whether the butterflies seek it out to lay their offspring, or if they will turn up their proboscis at it! She knows, from years of experience, what plants reliably return in spring and which need to be planted yearly. When Laura provided us with a pollinator “start list”, we knew the plants on this list would be reliable performers in our area.
Basically, Laura Jarvis knows her stuff! We are blessed to have her sharing her knowledge with anyone who seeks it out. You can also find her in our butterfly garden at our Bandera location on most Saturdays from 11-4. We encourage you to check if there are still tickets available to out Pollinator Gardening 101 class May 11th. You won’t go home disappointed!
(Photos courtesy The Butterfly Landing)
“A world without bees and butterflies, would be a tragic one.” ~Laura Jarvis
~The Happy Gardener, Lisa Mulroy
Last year I bought butterfly pea plants but became sick and lost them.
Do you have any plants to sell at Rainbow?
Hi Barbara,
Our supplier said she is planning on bringing up some Butterfly Pea Vine in the next couple of weeks. If you have access to Facebook, she will post there when she is expecting to bring them up. You can follow her page at The Butterfly Landing. If you don’t have access to Facebook, you can check back in about 2 weeks.