Ken Carman — Conservation & Nature

One Small Wildflower Bed, Seven Months: What a 350-Square-Foot Native Planting Has Attracted and Grown

Three Amigos: a Northern Parula, a green Painted Bunting, and a White-crowned Sparrow sharing one perch in the wildflower bed. Three birds from three different families, all in a single frame.

Last updated: October 29, 2026

This spring I turned a patch of mowed apartment-complex lawn in Jacksonville, Florida, into a native wildflower bed of roughly 350 square feet. It’s planted mainly with Blue Mistflower, Tall Goldenrod, and American Trumpet Vine, with a few volunteers that came up on their own. The first bird visit I recorded was April 19. Here is what it has attracted since, all documented with my own photos, nearly all taken from a chair in front of the bed.

The wildflower bed: about 350 square feet of Blue Mistflower, Tall Goldenrod, and perches on what was mowed lawn just this spring.

By the numbers (as of October 29, 2026)

  • Total plant and animal species recorded in the bed: 161
  • Bird species photographed in the bed: 40
  • Bird species on a single tall perch, placed May 23: 27
  • Butterfly species: 24
  • Dragonfly and damselfly species: 16

Highlights include a Lark Sparrow, 11 New World warbler species, Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Pileated Woodpecker, Indigo Bunting, Ruby-throated Hummingbird, and wintering Painted Buntings, which are seen daily.

Monarch nectaring on Blue Mistflower, one of the bed’s most reliable butterfly magnets.
Halloween Pennant using one of the bed’s perches as a hunting post, one of 16 dragonfly and damselfly species recorded here.
Lark Sparrow on a bamboo perch, an unusual visitor to Northeast Florida and the rarest bird recorded in the bed . . . so far.

A Bidens alba that outgrew the books

The bed’s most surprising resident is a Bidens alba (Spanish needles) that came up on its own from seed in a potted goldenrod I planted. On October 25 I measured it at about 12.3 feet tall, using a fixed measuring pole set beside the stem and photos taken from 30 to 80 feet away.

Me in front of the Bidens alba and its 13-foot measuring pole. The plant tops out at about 12 feet 6 inches . . . so far.

For comparison, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center lists the species at up to about 8 feet tall, often much shorter. Flora of North America gives an extreme of about 250 cm, roughly 8.2 feet. Wikipedia lists approximately 5 feet. The plant was never pruned or staked; neighboring goldenrod and an old fence shelter it from wind but don’t hold it up. Two nearby Bidens alba plants are also oversized, one reaching about 8.5 feet.

Measurement video: https://youtu.be/H-jwZkKc0PQ

iNaturalist observation: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/410780088

Sources: [Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center] https://www.wildflower.org/plants/result.php?id_plant=BIAL | [Flora of North America] https://biokic3.rc.asu.edu/seinet/ecoflora/portal/taxa/index.php?tid=9367 | [Wikipedia] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidens_alba

What made the difference in this one small bed.

A few simple choices did most of the work: dense native plantings, perches placed throughout the bed for multiple purposes, including resting, hunting, gleaning insects from nearby plants, and landing out in the open, food sources nearby, and time spent sitting quietly and watching. None of it was expensive.

All observations are posted publicly on iNaturalist: https://www.inaturalist.org/people/2081962

Red-shouldered Hawk beside the American Trumpet Vine. The bed draws everything from tiny hummingbirds to raptors.

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