Natural bird food - Sweet Bay's options

Sweet Bay Nursery, Florida Native Plants

We are fortunate in Central Florida to have natural bird food year-round in the form of plants. 

State, local, and Wildewood Springs HOA guidelines ask that we do not feed wildlife. There is a lot of information about this with Google, or info here and here and here.

Native plants adapt to our climate and rainfall, which includes drought times (November - June). Native plants promote a healthy ecosystem where all the creatures work harmoniously together. 

What is meant by harmonious? Watch the wonderful movie, The Biggest Little Farm. Look for inspiration on the film creators' Apricot Farms website. "Everything has a purpose...".

Sweet Bay Nursery is my first choice for native plants. This is a Sweet Bay sign reminding us that many creatures play a role in healthy gardens.

Pam Callendar is one of the people you might meet when you go. She is a passionate and experienced native gardener and artist, someone with good guidance for purchases.

In the last couple of weeks, I purchased and placed these plants in the butterfly garden. Come see if you can find them in the garden. I took these photos while at Sweetbay Nursery.

Lush season is here: flowers and butterflies

Passionflower and passionfruit. (Available as a print, a cutting board, and stationery cards, benefitting the New York Botanical Garden.)

With rains returning, plants thrive. The passionflowers grow more than they are eaten by the Gulf Fritillary butterfly caterpillars. I took this photo from in front of our place:

Before social media and smart phones with cameras, illustrators like Étienne Denisse (1785–1861) brought the world of botany to us via drawings. The New York Botanical garden is celebrating her work with a book of her flower and fruit illustrations. I found Denisse's passionflower drawing via Brain Pickings, a favorite Sunday newsletter in my email in-box.

Interested in adding passionflower to your butterfly garden? THIS POST includes photos and names of selected varieties. 

Most flowers attract butterflies. Here is a White Peacock Butterfly in the butterfly garden.

"Most butterflies live on nectar from flowers and some also receive nourishment from pollen, tree sap, rotting fruit, carrion, dung, aphid honeydew and minerals found in wet sand or dirt." - Choose Natives 

On a recent trip to North Carolina, I saw a bunch of butterflies on a dirt road getting minerals.

If your village is interested in incorporating little butterfly gardens, this website matches butterfly species with their host plants. Where to find these plants in our area? Check out Sweetbay Nursery and Florida Native Plants. (Links in the sidebar of this website.) It's a good time to plant.

See the difference in flora from a recent post where I showed a photograph of the pond's low levels? Before:

Now, look: