December 2019 - Looking Back at the Past Year

Walter's aster (Symphyotrichum walteri)
Silver aster (Symphyotrichum concolor)

Garberia (Garberia heterophylla)

Flyr's nemesis (Brickellia cordifolia)
With one holiday over and another looming in the near-future, there's a bit of time in between to catch my breath and reflect on what this landscape has achieved over the past year. It's hard for me to believe that a year has passed since I made my move to my new (rental) home in Pasco and began my landscaping makeover. What began as a simple 9 x 19' rectangle of St Augustine lawn surrounded on all sides by more of the same, has quickly developed into the pollinator garden I imagined it becoming.  Over the past year, seedlings I either brought from my former home in Seminole or grew here at my hobby nursery that I call Hawthorn Hill have mostly matured, flowered and set seed. As the flowers progressed, so did the number and diversity of pollinators. The near-extirpation of pollinators that occurred several months ago and that I wrote about previously, has recovered to its original levels.
Over the past few weeks, I've been very busy collecting seed for my nursery - hoping to get good germination on about 40 species that I can then share with the public. That is always exciting. Seed that I have left alone is also starting to germinate and it would look like I'll have far more black-eyed susan (Rudbeckia hirta) , wild petunia (Ruellia caroliniensis) and tickseed (Coreopsis spp.) than I originally planted. In a way, this is the tough part - recognizing the weeds that still want to establish themselves from the wildflowers and making decisions about how many of each of these self-seeding wildflowers I can leave alone and still have room for everyone else. Management is a forever thing once you've made a commitment to your plant community.
I've got one more aster (Symphyotrichum adnatum) that has yet to open its buds. I expect that to occur next week and the parade of wildflowers will be over for 2019. By then, it will almost be time for 2020.


Scrub blazing star (Liatris tenuifolia) - ripe seed


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