The Yard Of The Month Chosen By The Clermont Garden Club

Clermont Garden Club’s Yard of the Month for March is that of Tom Byrnes, at 10447 Largo Louisa Court in Clermont. Tom’s garden is vibrant, busy, and alive…abundant with plants and flowers for the pollinators. The yard is packed with passionfruit vines, herbs, various salvias (including Salvia Amistad), culpheas (including Culphea Schumannii), porterweeds plants (in blue, coral and red), firespikes (in pink, red, fuschia and purple), heirloom pentas in a multitude of colors and flowering trees (including a fragrant white cestrum).

 

Tom’s journey into pollinator gardening began about 32 years ago when he placed a potted flowering plant by the entrance, and saw a hummingbird come to sip its nectar. Intrigued and delighted, Tom wanted to draw more pollinators to his yard. After planting salvias, he then saw lots of butterflies. Tom began learning about which plants were hosts for which butterfly larvae, and he continued to plant these in his garden. During the growing season, Tom’s garden is abuzz with monarch, zebra, Gulf fritillary and various swallowtail butterflies (along with the hummingbirds).

Tom is a former teacher. With the wealth of knowledge from his personal gardening experiences, Tom freely shares gardening tips with others. Tom is the administrator of “For the Love of Butterflies, Hummingbirds and Other Pollinators” on the Nextdoor App. For the last 3-4 years, he has propagated his plants and shared them with a local nursery that specializes in pollinator plants.

 

With the recent winter freezes, Tom’s garden (like all of ours) is dormant. But he is eager to see his garden flourishing again to invite back the bees, butterflies and hummingbirds.