If your hostas were here today and gone tomorrow, you were very likely visited by a vole. Voles feed on a variety of herbaceous plants with particular fondness for hostas, roses, and camellias.

Voles feed on above and below ground plant parts, munching their way through foliage, seeds, stems, roots, and bulbs. When food is plentiful, their damage may go unnoticed as food other than your garden plants are available. As food sources become scarce, and vole population is high, damage from voles increases.

There are various methods to protect your favorite plants which may also be favorite vole noshing plants.

For your hostas or other plants voles enjoy, make your beds less hospitable at the same time improving the soil. VoleBloc, made by www.permatill.com aids in keeping voles from digging and getting to the plant’s roots. But to qualify this, nothing is fool proof.

Planting hostas in a container will also help, just be sure to block the drainage hole with rocks so voles can’t enter the pot.

After years of fighting voles in my shade garden, I decided to plant hellebores. Hellebores are poisonous to voles, so they stay clear. From this experience, I gained more than I bargained for. I gained an evergreen and flowers in the winter, and hellebores require less water, saving time an money.

No doubt there are there, but here’s hoping the are feeding on something nature provided and not what I so lovely planted.

Helen Yoest is a garden writer and coach through her business Gardening with Confidence™

Follow Helen on Twitter @HelenYoest and her facebook friend’s page, Helen Yoest or Gardening With Confidence™ Face Book Fan Page.

Helen also serves on the board of advisors for the JC Raulston Arboretum

If you build it, they will come…the butterflies, that is.  One of the best ways to encourage butterflies to your garden is to grow the food to attract adults with nectar-rich flowers and sustain them with host plants so they will stay and lay their eggs.

Adult butterflies like to land to sip.  Umbrella shaped plants make a nice landing pad to suit their needs.  Pansies, Zinnia, marigold, Joe Pye weed, coneflowers, sedum, black-eyed susans, Lantana are some of the kinds of plants adult butterflies like.

If your garden also have specific plants to host butterfly larvae, not only will you attract butterflies to your garden, you will also sustain them for much longer.  While butterflies are attracted to the nectar-rich plants, once there, they will look around for their specific host food.

If you want monarchs, plant milkweed; the only host plant for the monarch butterfly.  If you want Spicebush swallowtail, plant a Spicebush; if you want Zebras, plant a Pawpaw.  Fennel, Dill, and parsley are hosts to many eastern swallowtails.

Open your garden to the magic of butterflies….if you build it, they will come.

Helen Yoest is a garden writer and coach through her business Gardening with Confidence™

Follow Helen on Twitter @HelenYoest and her facebook friend’s page, Helen Yoest or Gardening With Confidence™ Face Book Fan Page.

Helen also serves on the board of advisors for the JC Raulston Arboretum

If you plant the plants hummingbirds love, filling feeders will be a task of the past.

Hummingbirds feed from the air, inserting their straw-like beaks into trumpet shaped flowers.  Planting sages, agastache, bee balm, honeysuckle, cardinal flower, pentas, are some of the hummingbirds favorites. Plant en masse to act as a beacon the hummingbird looking for a sip.  This also gives plenty of plant creating reason for the hummingbird to hand out just a little bit longer.

Did you notice the plants listed above are native?  That’s right, our native plants are favored and designed for our native bird.  Plant today and see what tomorrow may bring.

Contemporary gardens can be many things, except stark.  If that’s what comes to mind when you think of contemporary gardens, than consider this.   Careful, thought-out composition of gardens, accents, and containers can be striking.  Its rings of  a less is more philosophy.

Contemporary designs provide elegant, peaceful havens, working particularly well in small spaces, creating the illusion of much more space than there actually is.

Every piece.  Every plant.  Every addition to the garden, is deliberate.  Add one thing more and its over done.  Careful selection is a must, as is the ability to practice self-control.

Contemporary gardens are also restful and calming.  If this is your style, make it striking, not stark.

Helen Yoest is a garden writer and coach through her business Gardening with Confidence™

Follow Helen on Twitter @HelenYoest and her facebook friend’s page, Helen Yoest or Gardening With Confidence™ Face Book Fan Page.

Helen also serves on the board of advisors for the JC Raulston Arboretum

Fences can convey feelings. Seeing fences along a country road conjures up comfort from a space that is open and yet so well contained.

At home, the materials for fence selection should complement your house style.  A painted picket fence adds charm to a clapboard home painted the same color.  A wrought iron fence adds an air of formality to your formal style.  Similarly, Craftsman style homes should have a similar style fence or the two will not relate to each other.

Warm and welcoming, fences surrounding the property tie the home and garden together making the area from the front door to the fence an extension of the ground floor.

The fence, acting as a barrier between your home and the hustle and bustle of daily life, provides you with privacy and protection; but fences can be so much more.  A fence can also serve as your folly.  When adding a fence, consider leaving a space in front of the fence to plant a garden.

Consider the depth of your front-of-fence garden.  It could be narrow; a mere six inches, with just a fluff of greenery such as Liriope to soften the edge or the bed could be 3 – 4 feet deep for a full scale garden.  The bed shouldn’t be too deep since garden maintenance will need to be reached from just one side.

Adding plants for year round interest needs to be considered.  After all, your folly will be a focal point as well.  Layering with trees, shrubs, perennials, annuals, grasses, bulbs and vines; a mix of herbaceous and evergreen plantings, gives the design enough variety to maintain interest year round.

Go from a structure to a folly when designing with a garden in mind.

Helen Yoest is a garden writer and coach through her business Gardening with Confidence™

Follow Helen on Twitter @HelenYoest and her facebook friend’s page, Helen Yoest or Gardening With Confidence™ Face Book Fan Page.

Helen also serves on the board of advisors for the JC Raulston Arboretum