How to Grow and Care for Cardinal Flower
The best native hummingbird plant in the eastern US — and a wetland species that must never dry out. Here is how to site it and keep it going.
Category
Wildlife Gardening
Gardens that feed something besides you — pollinators, birds and beneficial insects, and the plants that draw them in.
16 articles
How to Grow and Care for Butterfly Weed
The native milkweed to plant instead of tropical milkweed. Drought tolerant, deer resistant, and a monarch host — but its taproot means you only get one chance to site it.
How to Grow and Care for Bidens
A heat and drought tolerant annual that flowers all season without deadheading — and, unusually for a garden-centre bedding plant, a species native to the lower 48.
How to Grow and Care for Blue-Eyed Grass
Blue-eyed grass is not a grass — it is a miniature native iris. Easy, tough and long-flowering, provided you cut it back before it seeds itself everywhere.
How to Grow and Care for Blood Flower
Tropical milkweed is the milkweed conservation groups tell you not to plant. Here is why, what to do if you already have it, and what to grow instead.
How to Grow and Care for Arrowwood Viburnum
Arrowwood needs a second, genetically different plant to set fruit — buying two of the same cultivar gives you flowers and no berries. A tough eastern native.
How to Grow and Care for Big Bluestem
Big bluestem is a native prairie grass that reaches six to eight feet and does most of its growing in high summer. Here is how to site it and when to cut it back.
How to Grow and Care for Beautyberry
American beautyberry fruits on new wood, so cutting it to a foot each winter is what produces the best display. A tough native shrub that feeds songbirds.
How to Grow and Care for Agastache
Agastache dies in winter wet, not winter cold. Pick between the blue hyssops and the warm-toned hummingbird mints, then get the drainage right.
How to Grow and Care for Anise Hyssop
Anise hyssop is neither anise nor hyssop. It is a native prairie mint that flowers from July to frost, feeds pollinators, and deer leave alone.
What Leaving the Leaves Actually Does
Leaf litter is overwintering habitat for a great deal of garden wildlife. Where to leave it, and where it genuinely causes problems.
How to Keep a Bird Bath Clean Without Harming Birds
Standing water grows algae and spreads disease. A cleaning routine that works, and the products to keep away from it.
Why Birds Are Ignoring Your Feeder
New feeders take weeks to find, but seed quality and placement matter more. How to work out which is your problem.
Host Plants and Nectar Plants Are Not the Same Thing
Nectar feeds adult butterflies; host plants feed caterpillars. A garden with only one supports far less than it looks like it does.
What Native Bees Need That Honeybees Do Not
Most native bees are solitary and ground-nesting. Why bee hotels are oversold and bare soil is undervalued.
Why Pollinators Are Not Visiting Your Garden
A garden full of flowers can still be useless to bees. What they are actually looking for, and what they cannot use.