Open Greenhouse & Plant Swap, Saturday, Dec 6, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., 602 Ronele Drive, Brandon, FL 33511
If you’ve never been to Open Greenhouse, it’s a great way to see what’s happening in my Florida-friendly yarden and meet other gardeners. The plant swaps are great fun – you never know who is going to bring what. (They’re not a tit-for-tat swap so you don’t need to bring anything if you don’t have plants you can share.)
This is the month we highlight food planted specifically for hummingbirds, because they’re winter visitors in most of Florida. We’re lucky enough to live around the corner from Steve Backes, owner of the FB page Hummingbirds in Florida, and he’s given us lots of starts that have grown up to be so large we need to share them.
Probably the top plant is the coral Porterweed. It has hot-pink blooms all year long that attract hummingbirds in the winter as well as bees and butterflies nearly every day. Although it’s not native, it’s not as aggressive as the non-native purple Porterweed. (We still have native Porterweed that’s popping up in places we don’t want it, including cracks in the sidewalk! It’s a low-growing plant so it’s not as much fun to watch but it’s definitely a bee and butterfly favorite.)
Brazilian red cloak, which is growing in full shade in my yarden, a truly remarkable feat for a plant with such spectacular blooms. Around the corner, however, the same plant is growing in full sun, making this a bush that nearly everyone can grow. Its only drawback may be its size – it can easily grow to eight feet tall and just as wide – but it’s easy to trim and even easier to share cuttings with friends who admire it.
The Dombeya, aka Florida hydrangea and pinkball, is another large winter-blooming shrub that supports bees and hummingbirds when other plants have stopped blooming. Like the red cloak, it’s a large shrub but easily pruned – and the cuttings are easy to root. Mine hasn’t started blooming yet, but it shouldn’t be long.
The powderpuff trees snapped into bloom early this year and you can already see the bees and butterflies flocking to them.
Native red salvia: A smaller short-lived perennial that’s a favorite for hummingbirds, bees and butterflies. It readily self-seeds.
Chinese hat plant: Cute little flowers that appear sporadically in the summer but become abundant when temperatures drop.
Firespike: Also primarily a winter bloomer, in red or lavender.
Flowering maple: Harder to root than most of the plants we grow, but several have ground-rooted in my front yard jungle. They’re actually related to hibiscus not maples, and are hummingbird favorites because their cup-shaped blooms make it more difficult for bees to access nectar so there’s more for hummingbirds with long beaks.
Firebush: Probably my all-around favorite plant for year-round blooms that attract bees, including bumble bees, butterflies and hummingbirds. Other birds, like mockingbirds and cardinals, love their fruit and spread seeds that pop up in surprising spots (and need to be transplanted).
And I need to tell you about my tomatoes again — that began setting fruit on Oct. 12, at least 10 days before I expected to see any. We’re already eating as many tomatoes as we can. We grow a variety called Tough Boy, recommended by David Scanlon at Practical Plants. We have some rooted cuttings and plenty of sprouts that need to be trimmed back. We’ve gotten more than 90% success on the cuttings we’ve been taking.
We’ll be going to a quarterly schedule starting next year, so put us on your calendar for March 7, 2026 if you can’t make it this weekend.
P.S. — The gorgeous hummingbird on coral Porterweed isn’t my image — I’m never fast enough to get a good photo. It comes from the Long Island Hummingbird Plants, which sells them even though they don’t tolerate weather that cold.