Garden Experiments
For the love of gardening and wildlife habitat
Information about how to grow, where to plant, how to propagate, soil and sun requirements, and more for garden plants and flowers. Discover new plants for your garden or learn more about plants already in your garden.
Purple passionflower, also known as maypop, is a relatively quick-growing, perennial, herbaceous vine in the Passifloraceae family. You can find this native vine growing throughout the Southeast from Texas to Kansas up to Pennsylvania and down to Florida. In Mississippi, I’ve often seen it in pastures or open fields. It’s a great addition to an …
Continue Reading about Purple Passionflower: Passiflora incarnata
The plants in the genus Salvia are some of my favorite flowering plants. There are many colors and shapes to choose from when picking a plant for your garden. Salvias are great pollinator plants - butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds love the flowers. Here are some of my favorites from my garden. All salvias mentioned below are perennial in USDA …
Continue Reading about Salvia Flowers Attract Butterflies and Hummingbirds
With spring around the corner, I am anticipating the bloom of spring-flowering bulbs. If you planted yours in the fall, you should expect to start seeing them in late winter or early spring. There’s nothing like the early color to break up the bleakness of the winter garden. Daffodils Daffodils or narcissus come in a variety of color …
Continue Reading about Guide to Planting Spring-flowering Bulbs in Fall
If you want to add some color to your winter garden and provide food and shelter for songbirds and other wildlife simultaneously, American Holly (Ilex opaca) is a good choice. The berries form in October and persist throughout the winter when many other food sources are gone. Its leaves are evergreen and form a dense canopy. The bright red …
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If you’d like to see more wildlife in your garden in winter, be sure to include plants that provide food and cover in the fall and winter. Some of these plants are evergreen, providing necessary cover, and some have fruits, seeds, or nuts that persist into winter. Here are some (mostly native) plant suggestions that can be used throughout much of …
Continue Reading about Plants that provide food and shelter in fall and winter for wildlife
In the South, fall brings a bright red carpet of strange spider-looking blooms. These are red spider lilies, also known as hurricane lilies (Lycoris radiata). Their bright red color adds vibrancy to the waning fall landscape. These flower bulbs are not native to the United States; they were introduced from China in the mid-1800s and have been …
Continue Reading about Fall’s Fiery Arrival: Discover the Striking Red Spider Lilies
