Show #03/7903. Container Gardens For Butterflies

Plants That Attract Pollinators And Last All Season

Eric loves benefiting from Pamela's experience. She's done so much work figuring out the plants that are great for pollinators. He would like to talk about specific plants that are particularly great for that application. Pamela will show her seven favorites. She's looking for plants that are great pollinators, but also will last all season. One is zinnia, it's incredible for all three of the pollinators that we're talking about. She's just not sure if it lasts all season. Some have and some haven't. So it's not as dependable as some of the rest. However, the pentas have been around forever and will last all season. Pamela has done better with ones that are branded, meaning that when you see it at the store, it has a name of a grower on it so that you know that it's a really good quality plant. They do better. Pentas do really well. Another is wax begonia TopHat begonia is about four times larger than the little wax begonias and it also gets about four times as many pollinators coming to it. One may need to order it one online. Pamela found it at a garden center, but it's worth the wait if you do need order online. And, it's a beautiful plant. Of course, lantana is just fabulous. All three pollinators are very happy with them, they're swarming this plant some days. Pamela added scaevola because she didn't want to start disregarding plants. If you look at scaevola, it's going to attract a medium amount of pollinators. But she likes its' trailing habit, which works particularly well with all her baskets. Eric notices another plant Pamela likes to use in containers and is great for pollinators - sunflowers. And there are many wonderful new cultivars out there. Pamela agrees, one day she was going through the garden center and saw the perfect sunflower because it was small and was covered with smaller blooms. So she bought it. It’s name is SunBelievable Brown Eyed Girl. It blooms all the time, like 50 blooms at once, probably has had a thousand blooms and bloomed for a full four months.