There Were No Fences

Short's aster - Symphyotrichum shortii Green eyes - Berlandiera subacaulis Softhair coneflower - Rudbeckia mollis We've had more than 4 inches of rain over the past few days after a month of virtually none. Today, with the soil moist once more, made it a good day to plant. I've been growing a number of plants in the Asteraceae in my hobby nursery, Hawthorn Hill, with this purpose in mind. Asters are the best  overall plants doe pollinators and I've never been satisfied with the few choices that have been ofered by the commercial native plant nurseries. My hobby, coupled with my new blank slate of a landscape is permitting me to experiment with a number of species that are not routinely offered by others - some that have never been as far as I know. If these are successful, they will add to the species that I can offer others in the future and while they grow they offer me firsthand experience in what they might require in a landscape. Plants in landscapes...

Black-eyed Susan seedlings I have managed a small hobby nursery that I call Hawthorn Hill for at least a dozen years now. It started when I grew frustrated that many native plants that I wished to add to my landscape were unavailable in the trade. This was especially true for wildflowers and native grasses. Commercial nurseries need to actually sell the plants they grow in order to stay in business and much of what I was most interested in did not have the commercial appeal that would have generated a profit. I didn't have to make money, and truth be told, I don't, but I discovered that if I grew my own wildflowers for my landscape that I had extra plants at the end of the day and that there were always a few esoteric folks like me excited to have some too. Hawthorn Hill has been a godsend for me with my move to this new home. All the seeds that I had collected last year and the plants I was growing in anticipation of my move has made my landscaping here so much easie...

Monarch nectaring on Salvia azurea - Apalachicola National Forest A diminutive dusted skipper on Spanish needles ( Bidens alba) The conservation movement is largely fueled by the species known as "charismatic megafauna" - the elephants, lions, giraffes and the like that we can identify with somehow. It is not so much fueled by an equal love and tenderness towards the innocuous and the drab; definitely not by the ugly. As a species, we humans have a very serious problem putting human characteristics to nonhuman life and taking on emotion for some species at the expense of others. That wouldn't be so bad in a world where our actions had little to no impact on the rest of the earth's life forms, but it has serious consequences as our world population hurtles towards 10 billion and there is hardly a corner left where our impact is not being felt. As I watched monarchs yesterday in my backyard lay eggs on the milkweeds I've planted for them, I wondered if mo...

Silk bay (Persea humilis) and leafcutter bee "damage" As I continue with this social isolation mode, I find that my landscape is one of the few things that gives me peace of mind and something to do with all my "spare time.".  In actuality, I spend far more time watching things than I actually spend "doing" something, but over the years I've found that much of what I think I know about plants and wildlife comes from this. Too few of us spend time in our landscapes actually observing how things work than we spend time trying to do something. Over these past weeks, I've had the time to see what pollinators are actually sharing my landscape with me. I've been able to observe which blooms they use the most and which plants they prefer to use as hosts for their larvae. My Spanish needles ( Bidens alba ) actually gets used by very little except the European honeybees, for example. As a member of the aster family, it too is a good pollinator plan...

Leaves in the woodland understory I often use dead wood in the understory of my plantings Birds, like this Palm Warbler forage in the litter As this social distancing thing moves forward, I find more and more solace by working in my landscape. Truth be told, I spend more time observing things than actually working. I've got the time to do that now and the freedom to do it without guilt. One of the things that never ceases to impress me is how "dead" things bring life to a landscape. Most bring far more life to a landscape than the living ones do. When I first moved to Florida in 1987, my first home had 3 queen palms. As a newly baptized acolyte of the native plant movement, I despised them. Nothing actually uses a queen palm - at least not in the way they would a native species. Two of the palms were in my front yard and easily accessible to a landscape company. I sold those two, made very little money from it, but the sale opened up room for plants I wanted ...