In Your Backyard: "Beautiful Wildflowers"

Our scenic Florida highways are a source of inspiration for color in the landscape. The wildflowers are blooming in swales, meadows, and in the medians and sides of the roads. Beautiful native flowers such as spiderworts, Tradescantia ohiensis, lyre-leaf sage, Salvia lyrata, toadflax, Linearis canadensis, phlox, Phlox drummondi, and narrow-leaf yellowtops, Flaveria linearis. In the shade of larger trees and wetter soils, we are seeing Red buckeye, Aesculus pavia , fringetree, Chionanthus virginicus, and titi, Cyrilla racemifolia,

Non-native red sorrel mixed with native toadflax.

Great opportunities to view wildflowers and submit your own photographs or favorite locations.

Please never pick the wildflowers. Native wildflowers will not do well in residential landscapes and ultimately die, but then they are not left in their original location to reseed and bloom the following year so that eventually the wildflowers die and vanish from the site.

Kathy Brown, renowned B. B. Brown's Nursery owner and scrub jay enthusiast, will be on the show today to talk about the colorful, low maintenance natives, how to enjoy them, and her upcoming Clermont workshops.

Resources for native plants:

• Association of Florida Native Nurseries
• Natives for Your Neighborhood
• Forest Trees and Companion Plants
• Native Plants for Home Landscapes
• Floridata

Non-natives can also be beautiful and low maintenance. I am very pleased with how well my lovely False Freesia, Anomatheca laxa, has reseeded and is blooming so quickly this spring. Usually blooming in May and June, this South African drought tolerant native, handles Florida's heat and rain very, starting to bloom in April. I will let you know how long the flowers continue to appear. It easily reseeds and allows you to provide pass-along plants.

Call in with your gardening questions!