Garden Experiments
For the love of gardening and wildlife habitat
For those of us who live in hot locations - or just have really hot summers - planting gardens that include heat-tolerant plants means we have more color in our garden for longer in the season. Find the best heat-tolerant plants for your garden.
Despite the name, you’ll find this ‘weed’ in more and more gardens. Joe Pye Weed is a good garden staple for attracting pollinators from bees to butterflies. I planted it last fall and this summer the blooms have been prolific and I have seen all sorts of bees, wasps, and flies feeding on the nectar. Joe Pye weed flowers are gorgeous. The stem …
Continue Reading about Joe Pye Weed: Native Plant that Attracts Bees & Butterflies
A few years ago, I acquired a new plant that has quickly become one of my favorites - Stokes Aster (Stokesia laevis). These stunning purple-blue flowers simply captured my heart. I really like incorporating native plants and flowers into my garden. They are easy to grow and very hardy AND they attract butterflies and hummingbirds. (Read my top …
Continue Reading about Stokes Aster – Native Plant With Beautiful Blue Flowers
In late spring and early summer, scentless mock orange (Philadelphus inodorus) is covered with bright white, 4-petaled flowers with a yellow center. These deciduous shrubs make a great privacy screen and are easy to grow. They can reach a height of 12 feet, so prune them back in summer, just after the flowers are over. (The blooms are produced …
You've probably seen the bright yellow-gold blooms of goldenrod along roadsides, in ditches, or fields. This plant is prevalent throughout most of the U.S., except in some northwestern states. It's a plant with a lot of wildlife benefits. Native Range There are about 120 different species of goldenrod and most of them are native to the U.S. …
Continue Reading about Goldenrod (Solidago spp.) Benefits Wildlife
The summer heat has arrived and it’s pretty miserable outside. When we're in a heat advisory, the temperature outside FEELS like over a hundred degrees with the high humidity. I’m watering in the early morning and sometimes at night, just to keep up with it, but the plants are still suffering. However, some of my plants are thriving, in spite of …
Continue Reading about Top 10 Flowering Plants that are Heat Tolerant
You'll see beautiful, tall southern magnolias anywhere you go in my state. They are nearly ubiquitous in front of antebellum homes in the South, which is a testament to their popularity during that time in our history. I love the sweet, gentle lemon scent of the blooms and the large white petals. It's a bonus that the trees are evergreen, so …
Continue Reading about Southern Magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora)
