Garden Highlights

Don't miss our Garden Highlights, updated weekly on Tuesday, featuring plants for their outstanding ornamental characteristics. Discover everything from flowers to fruit, buds, bark and more. Call our Bloom Line at 612.625.9791 for information or use the Garden Highlights layer on our digital map to find these plants at the Arboretum.

Featured Plant: June 5 - July 11

Common Name: Butterflyweed
Scientific Name: Asclepias tuberosa

Butterflyweed is best known for its association with the monarch butterfly caterpillars. This plant is the host plant for these caterpillars, providing a place for monarchs to lay their eggs and then as a food source once the eggs have hatched. Due to declining monarch populations, gardeners are encouraged to add these native plants to their home gardens to help support monarchs. Typically blooming from early summer through early fall, butterflyweed produces vibrant orange flowers.

Butterflyweed can be found in multiple locations throughout the Arboretum, including the Elizabeth Carr Slade Perennial Garden, the Bennett-Johnson Prairie and at the Tashjian Bee and Pollinator Discovery Center.

Along with Asclepias tuberosa, there are two other native species of Asclepias currently in bloom, which includes A. incarnata (swamp milkweed) and A. syriaca (common milkweed). These species can be found in the Johanna Frerichs Garden for Wildlife and along the Bog Boardwalk.

Asiatic Lily

Clematis

Pale Coneflower

Threadleaf Tickseed

Common Milkweed

Larkspur

Smooth Hydrangea

Leadplant

Ironwood

Easy Elegance® Shrub Rose

Daylily

Wild Quinine

Purple Prairie Clover

Rattlesnake Master

Staghorn Sumac

Floribunda Rose

Lupine

Red-osier Dogwood

Betony

Hybrid Mullein

Sea Holly

Grandiflora Rose

Astilbe

Swordleaf Inula