Here’s a few random plants from the yard. I have been meaning to share these more as my yard is pretty well covered up with plants and not too many people get to see them.
Most notably, below: my super-large poker plant, now with spikes about 6 and a half feet that I really wanted to share with folks.
If you want one, Plant Delights is a great mail-order company and you can also visit them certain weekends if you are in North Carolina (they also have some gardens you can walk around). The plant came pretty small and is I think three years old, last year it only had a couple of spikes, or should I say, spears. This year it’s completely loaded. Hummingbirds like all poker plants, but particularly this one.
Next up is my increasingly large collection (miniature field?) of Stick Verbena, which are great because Goldfinches like to land on them and eat the seeds - and if you buy one of them, you’ll have like 20 of them in a few years as the seeds grow in mulch really easily - and you can dig them up and replant them in different places. This one is about 6 feet tall, or maybe 5 and a half. They need a lot of sun or they don’t get nearly as tall.
Important tip: Don’t cut them all the way down in the winter, maybe leave a foot and a half of the stems until the first frost passes, otherwise water in the hollow stems may freeze and kill them.
And finally here (in the background) is a some kind of lavender I bought, which has gotten pretty large and is very popular with bees lately. I planted another 4 random kinds this year so I’ll have a lot more later in the year hopefully. I was kind of wondering about the local bees not being around this year, but they are definitely finally around in the first part of June, and it looks like there are some honey bees from somewhere this year too. Too many neighbors are spraying for mosquitos and not enough people are planting flowers and we need to support our insects.
The red yarrow in front is doing pretty well which means the bunnies haven’t found it yet.
Lots of other plants aren’t quite blooming yet, so I’ll share some updates later on in the summer with the monster annual salvia later (which keeps coming back, somehow), giant bee balms, and typically huge mexican bush sage.