Garden Experiments
For the love of gardening and wildlife habitat
Updated Sept. 5, 2025 You can attract Gulf fritillary butterflies to your yard and garden by providing food plants (flowers), caterpillar host plants, water, and shelter for the butterflies. Here are some tips for the plants to include in your garden for Gulf fritillaries. Gulf fritillary butterflies (Dione vanillae -- formerly Agraulis …
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The fall migration of hummingbirds is underway, so you might be seeing more of the tiny birds in your garden this month if you live in the Southeast. Male hummingbirds are the first to migrate, followed by immature males and females. So keep an eye out for that flash of a ruby throat and keep your ears open for the buzz of their wings. This lovely …
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Many of the flowering plants I grow in my yard attract butterflies by providing food for them or their larvae. It always makes me smile to see a butterfly flitting by or resting on a bloom. My neighbors probably think I'm crazy when they hear me say "hello, beautiful" to the butterflies, but they always seem like fancy ladies visiting my garden. …
Native plants are adapted to the soil, temperature, rainfall, and fauna in the area in which they grow. As a result, they provide some benefits to the gardener and local wildlife that non-native plants bought from your local garden store may not. I like the look of native plants in my garden. I tend to mix them in with exotic plants and I end up …
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Red buckeye (Aesculus pavia) has bright red flowers. The flowers of this native shrub are a favorite of hummingbirds and butterflies in early spring. In the southeast, it blooms in late March and early April, and you can hear the hummingbirds buzzing around the blooms. The red buckeye always catches my eye when it is blooming. These tall …
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If you like to watch the birds and other critters that visit your backyard habitat, you need a decent pair of binoculars to do so. There are a lot of low cost binoculars out there, but they will frustrate you with poor visibility, difficulty with adjusting them, or even poor durability. Expensive binoculars tend to have too high a magnification …
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