Clethra - A Moving Experience

 Clethra - or Summersweet.
Tiny flowers seem to be the favorites of butterflies and beneficial insects.

Sometimes a gardening debacle provides some useful experience. Our effort with the Chaste Tree showed that an hour of sprinkling the areas to be dug was not enough. We moved that tree, but with little root support. Its future looks grim, reminding me of Phoenix traffic - "If you want to change lanes, buy the car next to you." I might buy the next Chaste Tree rather than pull it from the clay soil.

 I found Chaste Tree potions on the Net, which cost more than the tree.

I really wanted a Clethra shrub in the rose garden, so I watered both areas for two hours. That was easily dug and fit into the area I carved from the loose, damp soil. Hours later, the Clethra showed only a little sign of the move while the Chaste Tree looked even worse.

My only hope is in the days of rain ahead and the Chaste Tree's remarkable ability to bounce back, as it did before when I moved it.

Moving plants becomes necessary when those cute little plants are all growing into each others, certain plans did not work out, and some things are best enjoyed in the main garden.

 Hidden Lily flower stalks emerge from the ground and last well in a vase.

I can move the six foot tall Wild Ginger Hidden Lily plants, because the roots will fashion a new plant after winter kills the upper growth. They have shown a propensity to take over the butterfly area while the spare garden has remained empty, the victim of rose gardening up front getting all the attention.

If I leave the Hostas in place over the winter, I will have stronger plants to divide and plant around the roses in the spring. I want to fill in the areas between roses with spreading, useful plants. To qualify, they have to fit into one of several areas:

1. Hummingbird plants - Hostas, Trumpet Vine, etc.
2. Butterfly plants - Joe Pye, mints.
3. Beneficial insect hosts - Daisies, Borage, mints.
4. Bees and all pollinators - above.

 Veterans Honor (red), Falling in Love (pink, white).
Both are fragrant.

Density Good and Bad
A great variety of beneficial insect hosts in the rose garden has contributed to almost no pest damage this summer - and no pesticides, of course.

We can see God's design in the way a dense planting will feed too many destructive insects, such as many roses by themselves.

But density can also favor the shock troops of the insect world. Daisies are always crawling with Tachinid flies, whose hatching children devour aphids. I used to let the first aphid attacks alone to let the beneficials address them with egg laying. White roses were especially vulnerable.

Try this at home - it is perfectly safe. Plant something new in the garden, a flower known for attracting a certain insect or butterfly.

• Parsley - Swallowtail Butterflies.
• Daisies - Tachinid flies - look just like houseflies but smaller.
• Joe Pye - Various butterflies.
• Hostas in bloom - Hummingbirds.

People ask about Joe Pye. As I describe its powerful butterfly attraction, various butterflies dart around its blooms.

As I told Jessica Walliser, her book changed the way I garden, because I am always looking up which plants will host the insects I want guarding the flowers. She "liked" my comment.