Well, while I was out today I picked up a few lantana for the garden, a heliotrope for a container, and some sweet alyssum seeds. Also some sand...and some bananas and oranges. And another parsley plant, of course :-)

Asclepias tuberosa is pretty attractive and tends to be short and well contained.

Asclepias tuberosa puts down a deep taproot so depending on what you mean by shallow soil, it might not grow well for you but it is short as native plants go and should bloom for several weeks. This native plant can often be found in nurseries. I have not had good luck with attempting to grow it in pots but it might be me, rather than the plant.

A new to me milkweed plant this year is A perennis, which is growing and blooming it's little head off in 1 gal trade pots. I started these plants from seed this winter so I know it will bloom the first year. It will overwinter in ground in my growing zone (it is native to much of the SE) but I've not yet planted it in ground. This plant might work well for you as it produces many, many blooms (currently covered in blooms) and attracts many pollinators to the blooms. I believe most butterflies would nectar from it and you would have the added benefit of drawing in any Monarchs in your area. The only drawback is it must not be allowed to dry out as it prefers moist conditions. Because of our hot summers I have to water all of my potted plants everyday so it hasn't been a problem for me.

I have young seed pods on these plants so hopefully, will have seed later in the year. This little milkweed isn't very well known but after having it suggested to me and trying it, I cannot imagine why it is not better known. Lovely leaf color, short growing so it could be used most anywhere, will tolerate some shade and produces many lovely blooms. I have read that it can be started/multiplied by rooting cuttings but I've not yet tried this ... Mary

The situation in my patio garden bed is that there seems to be a concrete slab under part of it, in some places seemingly only about 4 to 6 inches down and in other places much deeper. I can't figure out what's down there, as it is underneath an existing small tree and some pre-existing plants and a bunch of *expletive deleted* weed cloth and old lava rock mulch and all kinds of nonsense.

Parts of the garden bed get decent mid-day sun, at least right now, but it's kind of patchy because of the honking big masses of row houses to the north and south, balconies overhanging, etc. And the sunnier parts of the planting bed also seem to be the parts with the shallowest soil. The whole bed is only about 7' x 7' so even if I had normal soil depth I'd still need to keep things compact.

There is a small walkway with pavers that is partially in the sunny area, which I am rapidly deciding I don't really need to be able to walk on, so there's still room to add a few more pots. There is also a narrow no man's land out behind my fence, which I guess is technically utility access but is really a giant weed jungle littered with various terrifying urban junk - I wouldn't want to wander too far back there without getting fifty tetanus shots first, but I think it could be a place for some guerrilla milkweed planting in the future.

I'm trying to keep control of my ambitions for now and go slow, because I have serious chronic illnesses that limit my strength and stamina quite a lot. Because I'm stuck at home doing not-much most of the time, I really want more wingety visitors! Right now I'm concentrating more on nectaring plants - and of course my already proven strategy of leaving a parsley plant out at all times for wandering momma BSTs.

...And I just got my first Red Admiral visitor!

Of course, it fluttered around and landed everywhere EXCEPT on my carefully-prepared nectar plants and "butterfly bar" bird feeder filled with sand and electrolyte drink. Seemed more interested in doing its morning wing calisthenics. Well, hopefully it'll come back and bring friends, I've done everything but hang out a "FREE BEER" sign....

Verbena boniarensis is very drought tolerant and has shallow roots. It isn't native, but the pollinators love it. The flowers are on tall, slender stalks, but the foliage is short.

Thyme is a good idea - I keep not buying it because I don't use it for cooking, but it's such a pretty plant regardless, and I know polllnators like it, especially bees. I do have a marjoram plant that I picked up somewhere and stuck in the garden - it's a variety Crispum Aureum or something like that, very yellowy and curly and short - and I'm hoping it will bloom too, since I hardly ever use fresh marjoram for cooking either.

I think someone on my street may actually be growing Verbena bonariensis - I've seen a plant that looks a lot like it in a tree well on my block, which must be a very limited root space, since the tree well is mostly taken up by tree. I'll have to go out and take another look.

Beware the verbena bonariensis seeds from a single season will provide you with a decade worth of seedlings.

OK, this is the tree well on my street that I mentioned. Looking at pictures to compare, it does look like this may be Verbena bonariensis.

That does appear to be Verbena boniarensis.

Heliotrope is popular. This one is growing in a pot.

I accidentally let this heliotrope dry out the other day and it wilted down rather dramatically. I watered it as soon as I noticed, and then when I turned around, it was re-inflating at a visible speed. Slow, but you could actually see the leaves rising up and regaining their shape. I don't think I've ever seen a plant do that.

Clover may be a good choice. Butterflies, skippers & hummingbirds like it. It's easy to grow. Here's a list of butterfly nectar/host plants for NY - look for some that meet your criteria http://www.catskillnativenursery.com/plants-for-wildlife.html

Today's haul: one Pentas, another Lantana (a big pot that I think I can divide) and a couple thyme plants. And I think this might just about max me out on space for new plants this season. Never say never, though :-)

So far the heliotrope is winning the popularity contest, at least as far as the Red Admirals are concerned. I see Red Admirals fairly regularly now, so I'm guessing there must be some of their host plants growing somewhere in the vicinity. Today I saw one with sort of messed-up wings, poor thing, but it seemed to still have a good appetite.

More Red Admirals outside. Inside, my black swallowtails are growing into a fine fat brood (yes, I'm going to put them in a bigger cage soon; they didn't look like such a crowd in the little box when they were the size of rice grains, which I think was about 30 seconds ago)

My little piglets got so huge! Nearly 2 inches long for the eldest two. I did have to go out and buy parsley after all - I had picked my two potted plants almost clean and they were waving their stripy heads looking for more!

And now the first has picked its spot way up in the upper edge of the mesh cage and is spinning its loop, and the second is roaming looking for its spot. I gave them a bunch of nice branches to attach themselves, but maybe they like the mesh better.

This batch has grown up really, really fast - I found the first two babies on the 18th, and the other five on the 22nd. I'll miss the pitter patter of little sticky feet when they're all pupated.

Two of my black swallowtail caterpillars died. I don't know why. One was the runt of the litter, always a lot smaller than the rest and never did seem to grow as fast either. It just stopped moving one day. The other one that died was big and fat and seemingly healthy, but it too just stopped moving and died one day. I don't think there's anything I could have done, not knowing the cause - it certainly wasn't lack of food. I did have to use store bought parsley after picking over my two potted plants, and though it was organic, it could have had a smitch of BT or something on it somewhere, but whatever it was didn't kill everybody, so who knows.

The others all seemed fine. It's kind of hard to tell with these guys, they are not the most active caterpillars - unless they run out of food and get agitated looking for more, they can be pretty darn inert most of the time. When they start walking all over the cage, that's when I know they are ready to pupate. I now have three chrysalises, a fourth caterpillar hung up in its "comma" shape and ready to become chrysalis #4, and the fifth surviving caterpillar is now hanging out in solitary splendor on the cage floor. I can tell it's still alive and eating because it's still pooping :-) All four so far have opted to attach themselves to the under side of the top of the cage, along the seam. I had some twiggy branches in the cage, but none of them chose to pupate there.

So now I've successfully released 3 black swallowtails, one female and two males. Two chrysalises remain. My potted parsley plants are just now beginning to recover from being denuded to feed hungry caterpillars, so I'm keeping an eye on them for any new arrivals. Butterfly visitors to the garden haven't been as many as I'd like, yet, but I also haven't managed to build up much volume of flowering plants and I don't want to do new planting in the very hot months, so I'm focusing on mulching, composting, and planning for next year.

The heliotrope continues to be far and away the most successful nectar plant, even though it's sort of tucked in the corner of the fence and not the easiest to see. Perhaps they're homing in on the fragrance?

I'm thinking about next year's planting. Definitely need to add some milkweeds, but I'm also dreaming of getting other swallowtails, so I'd like to put in some Aristolochias for the pipevine swallowtails and perhaps a small spicebush or two. I have to be careful, though, because if I put in just a couple tiny plants and somehow manage to pull in a momma butterfly, I'll really be left high and dry if I don't have enough leaf mass to feed hungry larvae. I'll want to continue to provide black swallowtail bait, but I'd like to put in golden alexanders and see if they'll thrive and flower for me - would like to have a native that's also a good nectar plant.

For Perrenial host for the Black swallowtails, Golden alexzanders is really good. The favorite here is Poison Hemlock, or Rue. Rue is great because it also host Giant swallowtails, and the Poison is great because the bunnies dont eat it. The Bunnies love golden alexzanders.

Hmm. I don't have bunnies, that I know of. Squirrels, for sure.

I haven't grown either golden Alexanders or rue before. I'm a little hesitant about rue because of reports that people get skin reactions from it and it would be hard to avoid contacting it in my very small garden. Unfortunately I'm one of those people whose skin likes to react to things, though I haven't had any rue encounters yet.

In fact a very thorough investigation of everything on my patio for possible edibility was conducted just now, including some intense peering in the window in case my toes were snacks.

Thats funny! I dont think squirrels will eat any of the plants I mention. Rue can do that, but the major thing is if you get in contact, then you go into the sun that is what makes it irratant. I am the same way my skin reacts to many different things, but I have never had an experience with the rue.

This year, I've expanded my planting a lot. I've put in, among a few other things:

Agastache "Blue Fortune"

Asclepias incarnata "Ice Ballet"

Asclepias tuberosa

Chelone glabra

Chrysogonum virginianum

Lavandula

Monarda "Pink Lace"

Monarda fistulosa sp.

Viola striata

Viola (?) that I got from a neighbor that she says has pink flowers

Some of these came from a White Flower Farms gift certificate a family member gave me, and some from the native plant sale at Bartram's Garden.


I also think I've got Aster divaricatus (or some very similar aster) growing wild in the passage between buildings, so I'll probably grab some seedlings from there.

I'm attempting to cold stratify some native seeds that I picked up at Christmas - Viola sororia, more Viola striata (I didn't know I would later find plants) and Aster novae-angliae. Oh, and more chelone. I got a late start on the cold stratification so I won't even get those out of the refrigerator until mid-May. I'm not counting on any of those plants but I'm guerilla gardening in the back alleyway so if I run out of room in my garden, some plants can go there.

It's laughable to be scraping around trying to get regular old violets into my garden when they grow so weedily everywhere, but I'm trying to do the right thing and not poach any from public or private land, with city pavement cracks being something of a legal gray area....OK I may have poached one from an unnamed location, but it's struggling a bit and being attached by slugs. I need a wider gene pool :-)

I was going to try for some pipevine too, but I did not find any local source and my budget is now kaput, so I punted and I'm just going to grow some Heavenly Blue morning glories on my fence this year...pipevine someday.

OK, here's my update. The "short/shallow rooted" idea has pretty much gone out the window, at least for the back of the bed where there is the most sun.

Those seeds I was cold stratifying ALL came up, so now I have Viola sororia, New England Aster, and turtlehead starter plants. LOTS of them. I obviously don't have room left to plant all these but I will share some with neighbors and guerilla garden some in the no-man's land behind the fence.

P.S. Though I don't have much on the buffet for pollinators just yet...my bird bath has actually been a success with the nesting birds this spring. Mostly house sparrows and robins (robins love my garden because I am the Crazy Worm Lady and there are lots of worms) but there is actually a pair of cardinals nesting in the neighborhood, gray catbirds around, and occasional mockingbird visits. Not that I have pictures of any of those...

I love your birdbath! It looks to be a nice size, too.

I like the butterfly bar idea. I aslo thought about doing this. Maybe put a few pieces of watermelon on a plate and see what happens. I tried Gatorade last year, and I didn't get anything but ants haha. It was a good effort.

Some people recommended "butterfly brew" to me, which is a concoction of over-ripe bananas, beer and sugar. Now that I've got birds (and bees!) actually drinking from the birdbath, I think I'll keep using it for water; I can always put out a little dish for the butterfly brew.

I tried a butterfly puddle last year, dug in an old litter box filled with mud and added beer. Didn't work at all.

Is your birdbath heavy? If not, do you mind sharing where you got it? I have some that are really heavy. So dumping them every other day to not get mosquito larvae is a real chore. And the plastic and metal ones I have look so artificial. And are pretty small.

Looks awesome!!! Bees love Turtlehead, and so do the deer, but you dont have to worry about those little buggers!

Yeah, there are a lot of living creatures turning up here that you might not expect (fireflies! snakes!) but I don't think I have to worry about deer.

Iris, the birdbath is heavy for its size, but it is really really small, so I can tip it sideways to empty it (and I'm not at all able to do heavy lifting.) It's all one piece, though, not the kind where the top is separate - so I have to tip over the whole thing base and all, and I have a little trouble setting it back down so that it's straight and level - it usually looks a little bit cockeyed. And I put those stones into it so that small birds and bugs would have something to stand on it - but just made more work for myself taking them out and putting them back in every time I have to empty it. Oh well, I like the way they look.

The manufacturer is Campania International

http://campaniainternational.com/index.php?page=kyoto-birdbath

I actually ordered mine through Amazon!

https://smile.amazon.com/Campania-International-B-068-AS-1-Piece-Birdbath/dp/B003VAHKMM/ref=lp_9474253011_1_3?srs=9474253011&ie=UTF8&qid=1497227829&sr=8-3

The listing says it weighs 45 pounds. I'm surprised to see it costs $169 as I don't remember paying that much - but I think I used Amazon credit card points for most of it. (That's what I usually use for little splurges.)

When I was shopping online for birdbaths I saw *so* many awful things - this "hand" birdbath gave me giggle fits.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007CFNWFG/ref=asc_df_B007CFNWFG5026079/?tag=hyprod-20&creative=394997&creativeASIN=B007CFNWFG&linkCode=df0&hvadid=167148198363&hvpos=1o2&hvnetw=g&hvrand=7813164403135497027&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9007324&hvtargid=pla-280179951086

Thank you for the info! I do have one that is big, plastic with multiple levels for either just a drink or a full bath. I had it for 15 years and it has a hole now. I have not been able to find the same one again. It's a shame. It was lightweight, easy to clean and in Summer it looked like a community pool.

Spotted my first Red Admiral of the year in the garden today. It didn't stick around long enough for pictures. Happy summer solstice!

Yay, congrats on the Admiral! By the way your link got me to customers also viewed and so on... This is what I ended up with. Justified as a Father's Day gift for my husband. He actually loves everything with water. It's solar powered, so at least it wasn't a problem where to put it. And the birds already found it.

Hello friend! This liatris is great stuff. I should have planted more.

The Red Admirals showed up for me today like a gang of hungry teenagers. I can't say how many individuals, but at least three or four at a time, and they kept coming back in ones and twos all day. We have had a string of rainy days this week, but the sun finally came out today, so there must be a lot of pent-up demand for flowers.

I have seen 1 admiral so far this Summer. It looks like your plants are growing well.

I need to take an updated pic of the whole garden. So far it seems my assumptions about the shallowness of the soil have not been quite right, or at least the plant roots are finding space down there somehow, because the agastache and the Asclepias incarnata have gotten quite tall. I think most of what's down there is old, broken bricks and mortar from the original row house that was demolished on this site, so perhaps the roots are finding the cracks among the rubble.

I had just been feeling a little sad that maybe it was getting too late for the Red Admirals, because last year I mostly saw them in June and I had maybe seen one so far this year, but they just came out like gangbusters after all this rain we had.

My first monarch came today!! It didn't even stop to visit a flower (the main thing I have blooming right now is still Agastache "Blue Fortune") but it sure fluttered around the Asclepias incarnata "Ice Ballet" a whole lot. I took about a million pictures in which you can't see the monarch because it's buried in the plants, but when it finally stopped to rest up on a morning glory vine, I could see that it was looking a bit worn-out. Nevertheless, magnificently swoopy, and my first verified monarch sighting and first witnessed egg-laying!

I haven't been in this conference much in recent weeks but I see a lot of other people excitedly posting about monarchs, so good to see they're showing up at last! I wish I had more blooms for them right now, but I've got my Tall Coreopsis about ready to pop and Turtlehead buds slowly turtling their way to maturity. Liatris is over, New England Asters aren't budding yet, and I think my Monarda fistulosa has decided to be just a foliage plant this year...

nevertheless! Monarch momma!!

And also, lest I get distracted by the big monarch sailing around, I finally got a shot of the itsy-bitsy, teeny-tiny, pale blue, almost white, butterfly I have spotted before, but couldn't see clearly enough to ID - it's a Spring Azure. Which I guess is sort of a misnomer as there are some that are Summer Azures. It's incredibly tiny! (That's a half brick in the photo)

Great pics parsley! Congrats on the monarch...I'm sure you'll start seeing many more soon. They are now my most frequent visitors

By some miracle, I spotted two eggs and brought their leaves indoors, and I'm happy to report they both hatched yesterday, right on schedule four days after I saw the momma monarch. These two are actually my first monarch babies, so I'm excited - first two of many, I hope.

SO TINY!! I had to get my hand lens out to positively identify the eggs and then to make out any details on the tiny, tiny pillars. Not tiny for long!

One of the babies is visible in this pic. I have florist vials arriving shortly, so the milkweed sprig is temporarily in a travel shampoo bottle.

In other news, in looking at my Ice Ballet swamp milkweed this morning, I can see that the heavy populations of oleander aphids are no longer looking all yellow - a lot of them look dark brown/black. If my Google research is correct, this may be the result of a small parasitoid wasp called Lysiphlebus testaceipes. I haven't positively ID'ed the wasp but there sure are a lot of little dead aphids. In addition, I have seen what I believe to be larva of hoverflies/flower flies feeding on the aphids as well. I'm happy to see the natural enemies of gross aphids lining up for the feast! Lots of tiny biodiversity here in the midst of the city...

Congrats. It's really cool what an own world a gnarly looking milweed is. Still hoping you will post an overall picture of your flower bed. From the little titbits it must have filled in nicely.

Eep, you put me on the spot - it's starting to get that late-summer disheveled look. And yet I'm STILL waiting for some laggards to get blooming!

Not a beauty shot, but I take pics like this (with camera held up over my head) so I can more or less get the whole bed in the frame and have a record of where everything is and what size it is. This pic is a little over a week old, taken shortly after the rain. It's hard to see my tiny Juneberry tree against the tall coreopsis behind it, but that's what's in the seemingly "empty" space to the left of the fern.

The front of the bed is all shade/GC plants, because the building shades that area most of the year, but it looks a little crispy after high summer because the sun hits all of it for a while. I've started a good collection of violets here and also in the dirt alleyway that's behind the fence - it doesn't belong to me but it was totally neglected and full of trash and weeds when I moved in, so I've been gradually cleaning and clearing it and planting things to serve as ground cover.

Immediately behind the birdbath are turtleheads, still not blooming. Along the white wall on the left, New England asters that I grew from seed this year. In the back left corner of the fence, Tall Coreopsis that I transplanted this year, so it's had a setback and is late in blooming and also not so very tall. In the middle back, Asclepias incarnata "Ice Ballet", not blooming. Back right, "Blue Fortune" agastache which is still going like a hero though the flower heads are now pointing every which way. There are a couple of very small Monarda "Pink Lace" to their right. Buddleia "Ice Chip" is on the right of the birdbath. It's looking nice these days, but still snubbed by the bees and wasps that are constantly on the Agastache - though I do see butterflies on it.

The gigantic mound of vines on top of the fence is morning glory. I planted "Heavenly Blue" and it has yet to bloom despite being started indoors early under lights. As you can see, if I have a major gripe it is not enough blooms, in general! I still need to fine tune my bloom succession quite a bit, which is tricky in such a tight space.

The vines on the fence are climbing up copper wires fastened to eye hooks at top and bottom. When this year's morning glories are over, I'm pondering using that space for some pipevines, or else some other vine that will have more pollinator value.

This is looking great! Thank you so much for sharing.

I'm delighted to have released three healthy, vibrant monarch adults in the past week - two female, and one male. The fourth straggler is still in its chrysalis but should show up within the week. Not a big batch, but a successful one!