Garden Joy: Because I now live somewhere with seasons

So I finally got over my conviction that emails from me bother people sufficiently to have asked for some advice about gardening with natives on my deck from Carolina Wild nursery in my new hometown, and my favorite artist, Ursula Vernon, who was the second person ever to get me really invested in native plants (the first was my Envirothon advisor, Mr. Kelly, in sophomore year, and even then I thought it was a matter of rooting out the invasives rather than actually creating habitat for natives).

Dear God the response was awesome.  So much help, so many recommendations, so much patience with my naivete.  While most of the earnest native-habitat restoration Web sites will tell you that restoration is about landscapes, not gardens, not all of us are lucky enough to own a hundred acres of potential landscape -- so I will plant in pots with an eye to providing for small wildlife and hopefully establishing seeding specimens that might one day repopulate the little woodland on this property.

Preliminary garden plan: We've bought some apricot-colored violas and a red Japanese maple, a purple flowering kale, and some peas to take some color out onto the deck and give me something to take care of.  All of these are well-behaved non-invasives.  Hereafter, we're going to be doing all-natives with a focus on Piedmont Prairie wildflowers and butterfly hosts.  This coincides with our desire to go mostly purple.  We initially planned for two or three large pots, plus a pair of over-railing plant boxes: a wet bed and a dry bed.  However, our railings are an odd shape, so instead we're using pots in a variety of shades of aqua.

My working native-plant list comprises about a dozen species so far, but these are my favorites in terms of sheer drooling plant-want:

All images come from the USDA PLANTS database, here, or the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, here, both phenomenal resources, though the latter generally has more information for actually growing the plants.

American Beautyberry (Callicarpa americana)

Isn't that gorgeous?  That will occupy one of my pots.  American Beautyberry is supposed to be great for birds.

Liverleaf (Hepatica nobilis, Anemone americana)

This is both a spring ephemeral, which is very important to insects, and an evergreen -- the fuzzy leaves and stems turn dark red in the fall and winter.  It will probably edge a bed, along with:

Dwarf vernal iris (Iris verna)

A lovely traditional iris, a shade plant, and actually native to the Piedmont prairie!  Score!

Nodding onion (Allium cernuum)

Another Piedmont native wildflower, fairly rare in the Carolinas, this one attractive to birds and butterflies.  I'll have to divide the bulbs but that's okay, right?

Rattlesnake Master (Eryngium yuccifolium or E. aquaticum)

An awesome wetland native with thistle-like flowers and spiky globular heads.  So very cool.

I'm now working my way down a list of plants from a Piedmont restoration group in Georgia, so to anyone who doesn't enjoy the gardening posts ... I apologize.  I do.

I want to make purple and white flower jewelry.  Curse you, Pantone and your jelly-bean shades.  Curse you.