"Just because you hear a buzzing-noise coming from a tree doesn't mean you're going to get any honey."
From "Eeyore's Gloomy Little Instruction Book"
Xeriscaping is growing native plants that not only save you money on your water bill (In San Antonio, Texas, SAWS will give you a rebate on your water bill when you use xeriscaping in your landscape) but also save time because they don't need much care, and are more heat tolerant and drought tolerant than the normal garden variety plants.
Recommended xeriscape plants include Zinnia Linearis (orange or white and blooms all summer); Purple Fan Flower (a good ground cover); Mexican Heather (stays low with purple blooms all summer); Pink Skull Cap (green even in winter); Salvia Greggi (blooms all summer); Lady In Red Salvia (also grows in shade); Salvia Rhea; Cosmos; gayfeather (liatris pycnostachya); Coreopsis; Red Penta (also in pink, purple, and white); and Shrimp Plant.
Why am I so interested in
this? I have to use plants that grow without me and/or despite me. My
thumbs are so black anyone within a 42-yard radius thinks I have gangrene.
I want to use plants that will feed bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds.
Fortunately, many (most?) xeriscaping plants do all of the above.
For example: Zinnia, Salvias, Cosmos, gayfeather
(liatris pycnostachya), Coreopsis, Pentas, Shrimp Plant, and big time
heavyweight favorite Lantana
(Lantana camara), are listed in Geyata
Ajilvsgi's [ge-YAT-ah AH-ju-lisk] Butterfly Gardening for the South
as butterfly-supportive flowers.
Penn State's drought-tolerance Pointers include butterfly favorites such as indigo, daylilies, marigolds, and heavy-weight favorite verbena, among its recommended plants.
Many of the plants on Donald
Burger's hummingbird-attracting plant list, i.e., Giant
Turk's Cap (Malvaviscus arboreus); Lantana
(Lantana camara); salvia;
and, Trumpet
vine (Campsis radicans), are also drought-tolerant, low-maintenance flowers.
The added bonus is that half of these plants also 
attract
butterflies. So why not also garden with xeriscape plants that butterflies
can lay eggs on and caterpillars can eat so that they may become an addition
to our rapidly dwindling butterfly population? After all, is it possible to
grow a flower more beautiful than a butterfly or a child smiling at a butterfly?
It's up to us to intercede and provide butterflies and chance to live in this
ever more herbicidal, pesticidal, increasingly-everything-cidal toxic world.
Your grandchildren need butterflies (Remember that even if you're
only currently four years old. Remember the most foreboding warning Dr.
Suess's "The Lorax" could give to us..."Unless."
Be a Lorax -- speak for the trees...and the birds, and the fish, and the air...and
the...
Plants to repel pests but attract butterflies; Nectar/Larval combos for particular butterflies
Oscar the Grouch's Worst Mung Recipe -- Yum! Yum! Spew!
To bee, or not to bee...what was the question?
Best Online Butterfly Resource Anywhere!
Pinetree
Garden Seeds' Bird, Bat, Bee and Butterfly Attractions
Reasonable prices, quantities, and shipping.
Tea
Herb Farm
Lots of seeds and plants for specific uses, and a link to the world seed bank.
Agua Viva Seed Ranch
The only source I've found for Helianthus Annus seeds. The common sunflower
is now so uncommon one can't find seeds for it! Lots of specialty hybrids,
but no tried and true original. Most of the flowers under Wildflowers of
the Sangre de Cristos are flowers that support butterflies and
are flowers for which I've had trouble finding seeds.
Garden
Escape
My absolute favorite website for plant information and supply. Each
plant has statistics on plant needs, care, companion plants, and attributes,
and most have a photo.
'Flight
of the Bumble Bee'
Imperiled Pollinators: National Wildlife Federation's "What You Can Do About the Pollination Crisis" and "Create a Pollinator Garden"
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