That's a great list, CMK! I've enjoyed growing quite a few of the beauties on your list, but sorry to say I've never heard of the ones you inquired about. I love the tatting fern. It always looked so fragile to me, but this will be the 5th spring that it's come up for me, plus surviving a move of 600 miles. You certainly came home with a car full of treasures! Have fun! Patti

Tinasam, Sorry you have to put up with discouraging posts! I think your articles could be very useful lists for people searching for information on native plants. My only comment is that they are a little hard to read because of the constant page breaks, and the layout of the page means the text doesn't flow too easily. You could bold or highlight the names of the native plants to make them easier to spot in the article. Good luck!

Leaving aside the house design for a moment . . . For positioning a house, there are a few things to pay attention to. Rarely will you have every single thing right, so just give it your best shot. If you have several houses, you may wish to experiment with a few different places and find which ones do best over the years. 1) Warmth and sunlight. People say to make them east-facing for more sunlight, but they also need sunlight for a good portion of the day, too, to keep them warm. At dawn, it's still might be chilly in early spring and they won't fly yet. Some commercial operations even use supplemental heating to get the bees going earlier, but they have higher mortality if the air itself is too cold to fly. 2) Height. About knee-level to 12 feet is good. I always place mine right at shoulder level so I can check them out and they do fine. 3) Protection from wind and bad weather--especially from several days of bad weather, like a rainy cold front in the spring. Much of this can be solved by having a house with an overhang, just like roofs on human houses. If your house design doesn't have shelter like that, try building a box shelter for it that gives it about a 2" roof overhang. The bees like having a little ledge to land on too, but it's not mandatory. Make sure it's positioned so that any rain drains out of it instead of pooling. 4) Prominent location with a landmark. Bees will find your house better if it is located next to a prominent landmark with high contrast (black and white) or color (especially blue and yellow.) Placing the house on a prominent object that they can see from ~100 feet away also helps them find their way back home, fly to it, and land better than if it's tucked into a tree or narrow space. They need a clear approach. Masons can see blue and yellow and I think green. Paint chips didn't make much of a difference for me, but putting it on a stand-alone shed improved reproduction rates. 5) Stability. They're landing on it and moving around quite a bit. Stabilize it, just like you would a birdhouse. Hope that helps!

Do you have a picture? If getting yellow leaves it could be a watering issue. The leaves foldedup before? Where was it when the leaves would fold?