hummingbird attracting plants

Cestrum parquii 'Orange Peel'

Cestrum Summer

The floriferous Cestrum parquii ‘Orange Peel’ is a stunner in the summer garden as you can see by this weeks photo. This amazing South American dieback shrub is a literal flowering machine during the heat of summer. For us, it eventually matures into an 8′ tall x 8′ wide clump. We find hummingbirds and butterflies

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Sinningia 'Carolyn'

Sweet Carolyn…a Diamond in the Rough

As gardeners, we have a slightly different take on the words from Neil Diamond’s popular oldie of the same name. As Diamond writes; Where it began, I can’t begin to know whenBut then I know it’s growin’ strongWas in the spring, and spring became the summerWho’d have believe you’d come along? In our case, we

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Penstemon cardinalis ssp. regalis

Hummer’s Delight

We can think of few plants better designed for hummingbirds than our clump of the native Penstemon cardinalis ssp. regalis that’s currently in flower in the JLBG crevice garden. Known as the Guadalupe Mountain beardtongue, it’s hails from the rocky, alkaline slopes (4,500′-6,000′ elevation) of southern New Mexico and adjacent West Texas, in juniper/pine scrubland.

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Coral Bean

Erythrina herbacea, commonly known as coral bean is an amazing southeast native, hailing from South coastal NC to Texas. Our plant of the coral pink Woodlander’s Nursery selection is looking fabulous in the garden this week. This deciduous perennial regrows from a large underground caudex each spring, only emerging after June. It’s drought tolerance is

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Nectarine Queen

Looking lovely in the dryland garden now is the amazingly vigorous Agastache ‘Queen Nectarine’. This amazing giant measures 3.5′ tall x 3.5′ wide, and is adorned at any given time, May through October, with hundreds of flowers, perfectly designed for hummingbirds. Many of the non purple-flowered agastaches struggle in our hot, humid, rainy summers, but

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Holy Zauschneria, Batman!

Try as we might, we have been epic failures trying to grow the showy southwest native Zauschneria (now epilobium) in our garden, due to the combination of high humidity and torrential summer rainfalls. No matter where we tried them in the rock garden, they quickly expired. That was in the years BC…before crevice. Here is

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Flaming Torch of Summer

The 7′ tall, and very floriferous Hedychium ‘Flaming Torch’ is looking quite stunning today in the garden. Although they are commonly called ginger lily, they are not a true lily (genus Lilium) or a true ginger plant (genus Zingiber). Hedychiums are prized for their summer and early fall floral shows atop bold-foliaged stalks. The inflorescences

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