Buttonbush, too (cephalanthus occidentalis), lavendar (butterflies, honeybees, and bumblebees LOVE THIS STUFF), and it blooms from spring to fall for me in Oklahoma City. The cultivar I have planted is lavendula x intermedia 'Provence'. They had a ton of it at Home Depot this year for about $3 in a 5" pot. Leo, my recommendation on hackberry trees is to find someone that has a tree and get some seedlings from them. They seed like crazy! Mail Order Natives was my source for A. tomentosa as well, but I don't know if they have any left or not. Check their website. Coniclinum coelistinum, asters, and solidago are great fall nectar plants, as well as verbesina encelioides (Golden Crownbeard). Last year, the fall migrating Monarchs went crazy over Linda's. Do you have tropical milkweed? It's also a great nectar plant, as well as a host. Passion vine is a must for the Gulf Fritillaries. Passiflora incarnata and caerulea are the natives. P. incarnata will also host the Variegated Fritillaries. I am taking out my Achillea 'Coronation Gold'. It has attracted nary a butterfly in the last 3 years, so out it goes. Also, lantana 'New Gold' (the yellow flowering) does not work as well as a nectar plant as other lantanas like 'Miss Huff' (which is hardy to zone 7 in the ground), 'Irene', and 'Ham and Eggs'. Catmint (nepeta) like 'Walker's Low' is also a very good butterfly nectar plant. Get a cultivar or else it will seed everywhere. Agastaches are also great for nectaring. Veronicas (Speedwell), too. If you want to attract the night flying sphinx moths, plant Ipomeae alba (moonflower), nicotiana, daturas, allamandas, anything with a trumpet shaped bloom on it, but especially in the white colors. Have fun! It's so much fun to select plants, have them grow, and watch the butterflies nectar. Putting out a plate of rotting bananas or watermelon will definitely get you some Question Marks, Hackberry and Tawny Emperors, Mourning Cloaks, and Red Admirals, since they much prefer this over nectaring on flowers. Susan

I live about 20 miles east of naples, FL. I keep a journal for various interests and one of the things i've been keeping track of is hummingbird visits to my yard. I counted the number of days I saw HB's in my yard and it came to 188 days in the past year. They have been feeding on firebush plants. These plants bloom constantly except for a 6 to 8 week period in winter. When they are not blooming, I put up a tray type feeder to keep the birds around. I have two types of firebush: hamelia patens and calusa firebush. The hamelia flowers are a yellowish orange and the calusas are bright red. The birds don't seem to have a preference. The only differnce I can see is that the calusa flowers seem to close up during the hottest part of the day. Whenever these plants are blooming, the birds completely ignore the feeder. Right now I have about 20 of these plants in my yard, varying in size from a foot tall to almost 6 feet. I only bought 7 plants , then propagated the rest from seed and cuttings.

Susan, My flowers are doing the same. It is normal for the flowers to fade and even change colors in the extreme heat. I grow a spring- and early summer-blooming Texas Bluebonnet called "Alamo Fire". Normally it has red flowers. I mean really red. This year? They started red and quickly faded to a pale pink that is almost white. As of last week they still were blooming. To have them still blooming in this heat astonishes me. Of course, since I stopped watering, they're likely dead and brown by now. My rose-colored cleome is pale pink, etc. Whether it is worth watering is something only you can decide. I have stopped watering everything in the big garden because it was a losing battle and all I was doing at this point was providing the grasshoppers with a meal. With annuals, you might decide it is not worth it to keep watering. With perennials, or with annuals you want to reseed, I'd keep watering as long as the budget allows and as long as watering restrictions allows. It just kills me to even look at my big garden because it looks so bad. Let's be realistic. Many folks did not, in fact, survive the dust bowl. Many died of dust-related lung disease. Many pretty much starved due to a lack of food and wasted away and became weak and then the flu or pneumonia or something else got them. I've never seen numbers for the fatalities attributed to the dust bowl, but I bet it would shock us. Many who survived were very tough survivors. Often, they canned weeds (like tumbleweeds) in order to have food for winter after the gardens failed. Can you imagine? The heat? I cannot imagine it. I cannot imagine what it felt like, how they suffered, etc. We are just wimps by comparison and, you're right, we couldn't do it. We are too used to all the modern conveniences. My dad lived through the Dust Bowl and he didn't ever, ever like to talk about it. The memories were too painful. I would water and do what I could for as long as I could. I am trying to preserve a green zone around the house for fire safety and it is not easy. I not only talk to the plants, but to the butterflies, bees, dragonflies, birds, etc. Is there something wrong with that? lol I am so happy to see my four o'clocks blooming in the evenings that I just want to hug them. Without water, though, they will go dormant by the end of August. They're too far from the house for me to be able to claim they are part of the green zone around the house. My trees look worse daily. There's too many trees and water is too expensive. I am doing the best I can to save what I can and I will be REALLY MAD if fire comes through here and takes out my plants after I have worked so hard to get them this far. August is going to be incredibly bad, both in terms of fire, fire danger, and uncontrollable wild fire, and in terms of heat and drought stress on the plants, animals and people. For whatever reason, this year feels worse to me than last year. Maybe it is because I am a year older. I have had a buckeye in my kitchen for two days, just hanging on the wall. I don't have the heart to make it go back out into the heat. Isn't that crazy? Dawn

Davie, I'm in 10a on the Gulf coast and I love cottage gardens too. Especially the pinks/purples with oranges and yellows. I won't be able to achieve the exact look that I had and loved in Ohio but there are still options. My first couple of years in Florida, I tried my darndest to grow big Dutch iris, lilies of the valley, bleeding hearts, lamb's ear, bee balm, etc. that thrived in Ohio but couldn't handle to overbearing heat and humidity here. So, I finally decided that I needed to work with what would grow here and provide a similar look. I put in a new butterfly/hummingbird garden about a year ago that has been through Irma, our only hard freeze in 8 years and less than 2" of rain this year and is still thriving. It's mostly pink/purple/orange and and yellow with some red thrown in. I don't grow roses out of habit (we had nosey little dogs for years who liked to smell the roses when outside to do their business and always came in scratched up). I planned the plant placement perfectly (or so I thought) before planting. But, I wasn't prepared for how big everything gets here in SW Florida LOL Before you start, the most important thing to do in my mind is to work in tons of good compost and soil. Before I put the plants in this garden in, I rented a roto-tiller and worked up the grass (if you can call anything in Florida grass LOL), raked out the grass, stones and shells, and tilled in 40 bags of compost and as much soil TWICE. Believe me, it paid off. There's a few cottage style plants that I have tried over and over in Florida with little to no success: butterfly bushes and hydrangeas. The BFB looks great for a few months then overnight the nematodes kill them. I am trying one last time to grow one in a huge pot but if it dies, it will be my last. If you're in 9a or cooler and have some shade, oakleaf and lacecap hydrangeas can be grown. I was in 9a for the first 9 years in Florida and had some success with them there under the pine and oak canopy. But, here in 10a they wouldn't survive in my all sun garden. Here's some plants that do great for me and provide a cottage feel and are good nectar plants for hummers and butterflies: Salvias: Amistad (purple), Phyllis' Fancy (pale lilac), Faye Chapel (red) and coccenia (red) Porterweed: purple, red and coral Penta: Lanceolata (tall pink, red and violet) Firespike: red and magenta Misc: Red shrimp plant, lantana (pinks, yellows), Mexican sunflower (orange), Lion's Ear (orange), African Iris (white with pale lilac center), walking iris (purple, whites and yellows) Daisy like flowers: Gerbera daisies (they stop blooming when it gets really hot here but start back up when temps drop a little), osteopurmum (whites, pinks, yellows), cosmos (annual), cape daisy (yellow) Vines: tropical morning glory (on a trellis or arch with big blue blooms all year for me), passion vine (Gulf fritillary and zebra longwing) and Dutchman's pipevine (pipevine and goldrim host plant) What is the exact hardiness zone for your Florida garden? There's a huge difference between what is hardy and reliable in 9a versus 10a. Here's a link to the USDA Interactive Plant Hardiness Zone Map Good luck! We look forward to seeing some of your pics. Rhonda