My wife is a master gardener. We have flower beds all over the property. I used to have to mow those areas, but we have slowly added flowerbeds. Less mowing, more edging.
She plants stuff that is not available at the local big box stores, and common nurseries. She likes hummingbirds, bees and butterflies. Especially Monarch butterflies.
Oklahoma is in the path for the migration of the Monarch. I can remember in the past they were thick and made a mess on cars on the highway. There would be drifts of butterfly wings on the side of the road in places.
My wife plants milkweed plants in among the other plants. That is the only thing Monarch butterfly caterpillars eat.
Yesterday this little milkweed was covered in leaves.
This is in an area by the compost, and one of the less colorful flowerbeds.
She will go out in the morning and find the caterpillars, and move them to bigger plants that have leaves. We have dozens of the milkweed plants in all the flowerbeds. She is herding the cats every day to get them to plants with leaves.
This is earlier in the spring. Things have grown a lot since then.
This is parts of just two flowerbeds. We have hatched several Monarchs and Gulf Fritillary butterflies. The Fritillary eat a vine that we have growing on a fence. They completely striped it once this spring, it has new leaves and a second generation of baby cats, um cat-erpillars.