Florida Natives in Our Yard
It’s National Pollinator Week and since I am a ‘feed the bees’ type of girl I figured I’d share some of my favorite Florida natives plants in our yard. I hope these flowers inspire you to get outside and enjoy the many benefits of gardening.
Full disclosure: Since not all flowers are in bloom right now and since real photographers take much prettier photos than I do some of the images below are from Unsplash.
Southern Maidenhair Fern - The most finicky of all the plants in our yard, but I love it anyway. We also have pacific maidenhair and silver dollar maidenhair ferns (two non-natives to Florida that are much less finicky).
Coreopsis - Florida’s official wildflower. If you are ever in the Tampa Bay area around mid-May a detour to Myakka River State Park is sure to delight. The fields blooms for about 2-3 weeks with mostly coreopsis, but also marsh fleabane, swamp thistle and a few others that honestly I have no clue what they are!
Spiderwort - A neighbor gifted me a few of these cuties. The flowers open only during the daytime.
Fleabane - This dainty little flower showed up in the yard all on its own. I can just imagine how beautiful a whole meadow of these would be.
Wood Sorrel and Basket Grass - Instead of grass that constantly needs watering and mowed we let nature take its course. Wood sorrel has taken over as our shamrock-looking groundcover. It never needs mowed and produces adorable little yellow flowers. The basket grass (shown on the left side in the picture below) dies back each winter and comes back every year. It also never needs mowed.
Blazing Star - My absolute favorite flower on the list! We discovered this flower while hiking (down the wrong trail) to Dames Cave in Lecanto. It produces vertical flower spikes in the fall and there are 16 varieties native to Florida!
Photo by Kat van der Linden on Unsplash
Mistflower - One of these was originally gifted to me from a gentleman that worked at a nursery although it died. I bought a second one and have had much better luck second time around.
Photo by Anthonys Images on Unsplash
Milkweed - The sole host plant to the monarch butterfly’s caterpillar. We have a variety called swamp milkweed that blooms pink.
Pink Muhly Grass - An ornamental grass that forms pink panicles in the fall. (Partially shown on either side of the milkweed in the picture below)
Moonflower - I have a slight obsession with this vine. We have 2 growing up our arbor, one wrapping around the tree and a small one recently started from seed vining up the fence. These massive flowers open at night and are super fragrant.
[Bonus] Blanket Flower - It was discovered a few years ago that blanket flowers are not native to Florida, though it was initially believed they were. The pollinators here seem to love them and they are not invasive so I plan on keeping these beauties around. Blanket flowers, in my opinion, are the prettiest of the plants on this list after the petals have dropped. You’ll notice in the upper right side of the photo below they look like little puffballs after the petals drop and before the seeds disburse. My little sister calls them ‘Dr. Seuss flowers’ once they get to this stage.
Photo by Marina Yalanska on Unsplash
