Landscaping With Native Plants

Bee plies penstemons. The bees are "transitioning" from big dense clumps of lupine to nearby big dense clumps of penstemons now.

Our pine leaf penstemon cut loose in the last few days (mid-June in Montana.) They started serious blooming as the lupine blooms went into their final stages. These are bee- and hummingbird favorites, and especially attractive to smaller pollinators.

Louise planned out our landscape for "succession blooming" so something is coming out as something else fades.

A Male House Finch with Leaves on the Beak. They will eat a little fresh growth leaf in order to hydrate when the weather turns hot.

Female Finch Eats a Plum Leaf. The day had turned hot, and finches eat moist fresh-growth leaves to hydrate.

As our lupine continue a very nice long bloom, the bees just keep coming back and coming back. We have two large lupine clusters fairly close to each other, so the bees don't have far to go to get between clusters when they are "in season" for bees.

We are in a great HOA right now, but want to remind folks that before you change locations, we highly recommend checking in with any HOA before you buy. In person, if possible, not just the covenants, because they can be interpreted by subsequent board members. Be sure they are a "native plant friendly" HOA if that is where your interests lay.

The HOA we had in South Dakota threatened a lien on our property if we didn't get rid of our native plants. This was AFTER we submitted formal drawings and plant lists and got prior HOA approval for everything we did. We ended up okay, but it was a royal pain.

We just read of another case in Maryland where an HOA determined that landscaping had to be "decorative, not functional", and the couple had to incur $60,000 in legal fees to prevent the HOA from making them tear out their entire native landscape and put it back into turf grass.

So a little forethought about where to buy (and who you want for neighbors😃) can be very prudent.

A dove in a shaded repose. Shade and water in our yard brings in the birds.

Bumblebee drops by our lupine for a probe. The lupine went nuts this spring, and the bees gathered in droves. I counted 11 bumblebees in our twin lupine patches at the same time.

We walked by this "death sentence for all the plants" idea of a landscaper for "low maintenence." They even put in shade- and water-loving spruce. It will be very low maintenance-- like the Gobi Desert, not a living plant in evidence in a month.

It's amazing how many landscapers still do this. Every plant in here will be dead in the 125+ degree heat these rocks will create on an 80 degree day. And the building will be running the AC nonstop for 10 hours a day while the rocks radiate heat into the building.

This whole concept is so silly.

This California poppy was the first of its clan to emerge this year. They are busily self seeding themselves. This one jumped across the 3 car driveway to take up residence. 😀 Eschscholzia californica.