I’ve enjoyed gardening for many years and like to think that I’ve developed a knack for designing my own gardening projects. But it wasn’t until early this year that a light bulb lit up in my mind and I realized HOW important my plant choices were. My love of birding inspired me to design and build a hummingbird garden a couple of years ago. I studied and planned and wound up planting a combination of plants from local nurseries, a significant number of mail-order plants, and a healthy dose of plants from my local native plant sale.

Two years later, my hummingbird garden has changed. None of my mail-order plants remain and as it turns out, none of those were native to my area. Many were not even native to North America. Most of those plants did very poorly and I had one that did especially well…TOO well.

The pictures below show the progression of the garden from the beginning through my initial planting.

I’ll make another post to discuss my initial plant choices, what I’ve learned about why native plants are so very important, and post some pictures of how it looks now!