Certainly not as much as you, Vonyon.

But I finally got something I've wanted for years: a bottlebrush buckeye.

I also put in an itea, several small white pines and something else the name of which I can never remember - but I wanted it for a long time!

Hi Vonyon,

Great idea! I planted 2 "ruby" persimmon, 4 different types of blueberries...which I'm willing to 'SHARE' with the wildlife. Also, I planted lots of brambles, a pagoda dogwood, a silky dogwood, 2 blue hollies and I have a serviceberry coming in the spring....does that count?

I'm fortunate in that I have 2 mature American hollies, 2 crabapples and 3 cornus florida, a viburnum and many other natives but those are the ones most appealing to wildlife. Altho the large white pine I have with Virginia creeper growing 35' up is a favorite too.

In the spring I want inkberries and a cranberry bush.

I mostly just moved a few shrubs around, but I did plant a small rose, which I hope will provide some hips. I'm trying to figure out where I can fit in some elderberries.

I already have serviceberry, viburnum trilobum, graytwig dogwood, white pine, liatris, coneflower, virginia creeper, spicebush, penstemon, along with apple trees, pear trees, cherry trees, strawberries, and raspberries, which I did not plant for the wildlife, but they are beating me to it. The cherry trees were loaded with cedar waxwings this year. Just beautiful! Pear trees bore their first pears this year. Gray squirrels got them. I just wanted one pear, so we could taste them. Oh well. Maybe next year.

planted a shadbush, which is a serviceberry but didn't know that until after i planted it:) a winterberry holly, two china girl and boy holly(foundation plants, needed evergreen and somethign to survive zone 5 and thats what i could get. and heh they won't grow into a tree like the american holly i foolishly thought would do good near the foundation) lol

planted lots and lots of herbs. sigh. went plant crazy. have pyretheum somewhere, bronze fennel for the butterflies, had a pineapple sage i gave away come near wintertime, varioud types of other sages, thyme, and went mint crazy. Planted roses becaue this tom boy fell in love with them. As well as hibiscus:) agastache foeniculum, cosmos, and various echinacheas. ws various penstemmons, agastache cana, basil and other things i forget. planted sunflowers as well as wintersowed them. ws a cup plant:) and lemon horsemint that i'm hoping comes up. the butterfly bush sungold took off and the hummingbird moths really liked it. so did the yellow jackets and bees. I've tried to balance out the decorative non native plants with native ones. got some ny ironweed and a native honeysuckle i'm trying to finish building an arbor for. Some of the plants i've gotten i was surprised were native. like the turtle head chelome(sp?) but its pink. and oddly enough my local shopping center has sold a lot of native ones. I got some on their end of the season sales. Hopefully they'll all thrive come spring.

I'm hoping in next year to put in a male winterberry holly on the other side of the yard, spice bush with the white oak the development people are hopefully putting in since that is the tree i requested. and i'm not sure what else maybe a hazelnut but i'm wondering about the room. next to the shadbush, and winterberry female holly i want to put in a witchhazel. ANd we'll see what else i fall in love with and have to get come spring. :)

These are all great ideas. I'm going to look into the itea and the spicebush.

Peggy: I also want to add blueberries. Are you having any problem keeping the acid high enough for them? Will the Virginia creeper kill the pine? We have one here growing up a spruce tree and it has all but killed the tree. I love to watch the birds in it when the berries are ripe. The tree appears to be quivering! Where have you ordered your serviceberry from? I think they will do better if you plant a couple of different types, but maybe I'm mixing my plants up. If you want a good source, try the link below. You can't beat the price and quality.

Wow, Moonwolf, that's a lot of planting. Do you know what type of winterberry you have? If you do then you will be able to find the right mate. I believe they have to bloom at the same time in order to be of use to one another. I think I have Jim Dandy and Red Sprite. Those are the two types of plants that did not do very well. I'm hoping that I'm pleasantly surprised come spring, but I may need to reorder them. I bought inkberry (male) from Solomon Holly Farm. It was tiny, but has done very well. I hope it makes it through the winter. They may even tell you what hollies work well together. I don't think I can grow the holly trees this far north. Maybe I'm wrong though. Here is the web site for SHF: http://www.solomonhollyfarm.com/plantdes.htm#SHRUBS

Here is a link that might be useful: NH Nursery

I had a spicebush but it died...gotta get another one.

Vonyon, I just planted the blueberries. I love their winter color so much. I started out with a local blueberry of which I don't know the name. This spring I went to Edible Landscapes near Charlottesville, Va and got bluecrop, sunshine and powderblue. The powdeblue is so beautiful...heck they all are. The ones in the nursery were mature and many had berries on June 23 (our 20th anniversary) I couldn't drag DH away from the bluecrop. Those were his favorite;) I got my serviceberry from EL also.

For the blueberries, I prepared the soil ahead of time with compost, peat moss, pine needles and shredded leaves. So far I haven't done anything else but I plan to fertilize with Hollytone which is organic and is recommended for acid loving plants.

I didn't know that serviceberries are happier in pairs but I know that many plants are. I also planted Asian pears this year from EL. As well as grapes, kiwi...and I forgot to mention paw-paws. I planted those 4 years ago.

Great link...I'll enjoy looking over that.

i look forward to next year when i have the time that i didn't have this year. i did add some ligonberries that died :( and broadcast some wildflower seeds from the exchange forum. thanks all!!

honestly don't know what type. I know its a native holly hardy to my zone. which limits me to winterberry of whatever type it is or the american holly tree. but i had a pleaseant surprise. have 3 growing in the backyard wild. they all have berries so one of them must be male. Or theirs a male somewhere.

Yeah i kinda went insane on the plants lol. I couldn't drive by a local nursery without stopping inside. ANd a few had a few great sales. That and i got involved in the plant and seed exchange. Boy that place is addictive. Mind you the plants i got are enough to only really do the side yards. When i get the back yard looking like something other than a goldenrod exibit we'll see.

THen again the old lady who lives down the street does much to encourage my plant crazyness lol.

oh i forgot on sale at hd i got a weeping crabapple. Which really is this forums fault you know. All that talk about crabapples had me wanting to go get one.

Moonwolf, Inkberry is hardy to our zone as well. Maybe it is the Red Sprite. Good luck.

Peggy, I love that edible landscape catalog, but I'm trying to stick with natives. They seem to be easier to care for and I have a few alien invasive plants here ruining my wild areas. One is Asiatic bittersweet. I feel after dealing with that for a while, that I have to avoid non-native especially the ones that attract the birds because they are spread so easily by the birds.

Vonyon,

I forgot to answer your question about the virginia creeper. It's been growing into that old pine tree for many years now and has formed a nice groundcover around the base too. During the summer months the trunk is hidden by the foliage of the VC and the tree doesn't seem to mind at all. I've planted daffodils around the base of it as well as some native saxifraga's and I love the way it looks. I do have to trim the VC back from time to time and I get an ocassional seedling here and there. One thing I've noticed is that Japanese beetles like to munch on VC when it's growing in the sun but they don't bother it when it's growing in shade.

I started a small orchard this year and the Asian pears are said to be the easiest fruiting trees to grow. You need 2 for best production. They're very ornamental and at maturity they can produce up to 400 lbs of fruit in a season. Plus they'll store for months.

I figure that DH and I can set up a roadside stand in front of our house and sell pears in our old age. Or sip on pear wine while enjoying the birds that come to visit.

After cheating and doing a search on the internet for 'shrubs fall foliage' I remembered what my other shrub is: fothergilla.

To those planting spicebush - as with the hollies, you need males and females.

Thanks newjersey tea. It's hard to tell unless they have berries when you buy them. There are no cultivars like hollies and even northern bayberry (wildwood is female). This year I added more serviceberry, spicebush, northern bayberry, viburnum lentago and nudum. Also chokecherry ,blackcherry, chickasaw plum, I planted 2 eastern red cedar. You need a male and female for that too. Fortunatly I found a female in Delaware.One small pagoda dogwood. I planted a small southern crabapple and a medium tulip poplar. I also planted for the hummingbirds a rhododendron austrinum, and canescens. Sarah

Sarah, the hummers love the tulip tree blossoms also. When the trees are in bloom the birds disappear from my feeders to feed almost exclusively in the "tuplips".

I forgot to add that I planted bayberry also. I knew I'd forget something! I didn't know those needed a male and female. I planted about 10, so I hope there are both in the mix.

We plant pine trees every year.we get about 100 a year.Some we planted 12 years ago are getting nice.I planted more fruit trees.

Let's see, added three elderberries, 2 serviceberries, 2 persimmons, 3 periclymenoides azalea, 2 paw paws, 2 red osier dogwood, 1 native wisteria...my long sought after huckleberries bit it by the end of the summer. Sniffle... I hope to add some native plum thicket next spring. But we may be moving to MN, so I am scaling back and dreaming of places where snow actually falls!

I have added Blue and Red Porterweeds (the butterflies love them), East Palatka Holly trees (already see a few red berries and the trees are young), cluster of 4 Pigmy Date palms (growing slowly), Bamboo palm, Crotons, Song of Jamaica shrubs, Firebush (it's struggling), Leyland Cypress tress (I worry about the brown areas), Pine trees, Lemon tree, Avocado tree, Mango tree and Lychee tree (just moved the Mango and Lychee into the shade as leaves were turning brown--Lychee tree has yummy fruit), Fountain grasses (struggling), Fig tree (struggling), White and Pink Indian Hawthorne shrubs (pink one is growing), Wild Petunia (stoppped blooming right away), Ficus tree (it's growing--was oh so rootbound in that pot), Rubber tree, Sea Grape shrub, Lantanas (struggling), Loropetalum shrub, Bottlebrush shrub, ferns, Heliconias, Red Powder Puff shrub (beautiful little pinkish red puffs blooming now), Alamanda shrub (needs help), Shrimp plants, Coffee plant, Durantia bush (it's so beautiful with a nice spreading, branching out habit, little white flowers and yellow berries now that birds love), Thryallis bush (stopped blooming), Confederate Jasmine and Pubescens Jasmine bush (I planted them right beside each other and they take turns blooming and I love the way the vines kind of snake out around a little--used stakes to keep them growing upward), Hibiscus trees (blooming--one peach flowered one that's gotten very green and full and one red flowered one with a corkscrew trunk which is much smaller but has more blooms --everyday in fact), Crepe Myrtles, Southern Magnolia tree (it's growing!), Heavenly Bamboo (needs help), Arborvitaes, Philodendrons (not much growth), Azalea bush, Rosemary bush, Viburnum Odoratissimums shrubs (they are growing), Yesterday, Today and Tommorrow shrubs (lost all leaves but still green), Maple tree (lost most of leaves), Japanese Holly bush, Schilllings Holly bushes (growing slowly--little shoots coming out), Variegated Schefflera (growing outward well), White Iris, American Holly bush, Ligustrum Lucidum, Blue and Red Salvia (Blue not blooming, red is). Most are young plants so it doesn't look like much is there now.

Vonyon, I'm sure you have male and female bayberrys But just in case you need a female the wildwood cultivar is always female and Pineridge gardens carries it. newjersey tea that was one of the reasons I planted the tulip poplar besides the fact that that they are such a beautiful tree. This year I finally had jewelweed growing in a corner of the yard I'm hoping it will spread. jillmcm sorry about your leaving Pa. I want to thank you for telling me about redbud native plant nursery. I really love that place and spent far too much money there. It's almost as good as Bowman's wildflower preserve spring plant sale. I will be back next spring. Sarah

I planted a bunch of things this past Spring which will probably not produce berries for quite some time. I planted a native Black Cherry Tree along with 2 Red Mulberries which I'm hoping will produce fruit in my lifetime! I planted a couple of native dogwood and Viburnum.The birds planted pokeberries EVERYWHERE. A white pine...can't think what else!!

Also planted several Plumbago bushes that take turns blooming as they were purchased at 2 different times. I loved the shade of blue in the flowers when I first saw them in different places and noticed they always seemed to be against a sign or wall and always blooming so I planted them against the shed after trying them in a couple of different places and they have done well there. How could I have forgotten to mention one of my first favorites?

I didn't add much this spring as I laid off on the mail orders. I planted one small Nanking cherry and some replacement blackberries. I am sure I will buy locally because sometimes I just can't resist!