Planting More Natives and More Nesting

Over the last two weekends, I’ve planted a few more plants out in to my native plant garden. I planted the wonderful Garry oak that my brother bought for my birthday.

In his new book, The Nature of Oaks, Dr. Douglas Tallamy says that these trees may not produce their first acorns for seventeen years! He also mentioned that they are wind-pollinated, so another tree needs to be close by. I plan to plant one of my seedlings from the failed Garry Christmas promo alongside this 4-foot sapling so that they can grow together and pollinate each other. Won’t it be great if I live to see the trees’ first acorns?!

At the same time, I planted a Lewis’ mock orange (Philadelphus lewisii), three Achillea plants, and a native iris. Today, I planted out a bunch of my home-grown seedlings–about 15 Aquilegia formosa, and six Sidalcea hendersonii.

As I planted these plants in my weird little prairie, I was really enjoying the blue lyme grass flower stalks.

And overall, the garden is growing well this year.

My favorite “Ifyouplantittheywillcome.org” moments today involved birds. A hummingbird swept in within two feet of me and picked a spider out of a web right outside the greenhouse. Also, while I was potting some native seedlings into larger pots,I spotted this in the greenhouse, which tells me more of “them” have come! Hurray!