So far this year it has been an extremely hot, but luckily for the garden, a very wet summer here in South Florida. My backyard wildlife habitat and gardens have been thriving. It’s amazing how much everything has grown and filled in over the summer. Here are a few recent pictures.
I have had to trim the tropical sage (Salvia Coccinea) back off of the pathways a couple of times this summer already. This Florida native plant brings so much color to the garden and continually reseeds itself. Every Florida butterfly garden should include this easy to grow plant. It is always full of butterflies and bees!
Hopefully no one chastises me for the non native (somewhat invasive) plants in this part of the garden. I will say I am slowly replacing plants with native substitutes but not at the cost of a bare garden. I have two different ground covers in this picture that have done an amazing job this summer of filling in the bare spots. On the left is sunshine mimosa (mimosa strigillosa) a hardy Florida native that provides blooms of pink powder puffs every day. It’s beauty even survives the dogs running through it daily chasing the squirrels out of the bird feeders. If you’re trying to fill in an area VERY quickly I recommend buying a few ornamental sweet potato vines. We returned from a two week vacation this summer and the plants had spread and multiplied and then spread some more! I keep losing my gnomes and mushrooms in its depths. They have now been moved out to the edge of the pathway. I’m curious how the sweet potato vine will do in our South Florida winter?
Okay, not a picture of the gardens but it is of someone who visits them – or at least the bird feeders! Not my favorite bird that visits but catching this eurasian collared dove in flight is a beautiful picture.
One last picture of the gardens and my little owl on his Certified Wildlife Habitat sign. It’s amazing how people change over the years. I could have never imagined my younger self spending so many hours sweating in the heat and playing in the dirt, and I can’t image my older self doing anything but..
Keep gardening!!