Nature, My Garden and Me: Our Hummingbird Loving the Newest Flowers

Our hummingbird enjoying latest floral additions to the new flower beds in the Butterfly Garden: snapdragons and gazanias. We aim to please, Miss Hummingbird! We also have oleander, petunia, lantana, salvia and hanging hummingbird feeders. 

But our vibrant hummingbird community (which nests in our fruitless mulberry tree), checks out all flowers, even the sunflowers, which are not their traditional source of nectar. 

This is a Teaching Garden in the Mojave Desert of SoCal. The new flower bed is still very sandy, but as mulch is added every year, the active groups of biodegraders--especially earthworms--continue to enrich the soil, and the plants, trees, shrubs and flowers help solve the erosion problem of the hillside location of the Garden.