Hi, Kim. Welcome to the sunny south. If you were here in January through March you may have wondered what the heck happened. We had one of the longest cold periods in many, many years. What you are seeing may be wild blackberries or dewberries but not strawberries. Dewberries grow about a foot high. Blackberries may grow about 5-6 feet tall.

As for a book, I recommend Alabama Wildflowers by Jan W. Midgely.

Thanks for the recommendation, Tsmith. LOL, we arrived here in September of '09, and got teased a lot about having brought the cold weather down from Massachusetts. I was pretty thrilled that I didn't have to shovel any snow, though! But I did have to buy a winter coat. :)

We are just beginning to get settled - bought a house & hope to move out of the apt. before the end of this month. It has ample gardening space, and I can't wait to get the 75 or so varieties I've started from seed (I'm a regular on the Wintersowing Forum), plus the plants I brought with me, into the ground. I am very excited about learning about the native plants, the challenges of growing in the heat vs. the cold, what grows well in clay (vs. the sand I'm used to on the south coast of MA).

I'll check out the book, and thanks again.

An older but still good book is the Blanche Dean book, Wildflowers of Alabama and there is a book on North Alabama Wildflowers but not sure if that is the exact title. I would suggest going to any independent book stores in the area and see what they have. We also have an Alabama Wildflower Society and I'm sure Huntsville has a chapter. You can google them and see who to contact. As a native plant gardener and, to some extent, grower - welcome to Alabama. We are extremely rich in wildflowers. Montesano has excellent spring ephemerals as does the Bankhead National Forest. The Huntsville Botanical Garden has a good native plant garden you may want to visit. If you want to send me pics of anything blooming in your area that you think may be native, I'll be glad to try and ID it for you. Linda

Thank you, Linda. I am sooooo excited about being here, I want to just delve into the gardening, the native plants, and yes, visit Huntsville Botanical Society SOON - but of course, I'm just getting into work and housing, so this will all take awhile. I will look up the Wildflower Society as well. Although I love my various - domesticated? - plants, I am a great fan of natives - they're native for a reason. My new house has a lot of sunny area, but backs up to a wooded creek, so I should have lots of opportunities.

If I can get some pix of some of the stuff blooming behind the apartment complex, I will email them - thanks for the id offer.

Well, well, well! For the last 3 years going on 4, I've been learning to garden a la Massachusetts! It is very different. And my DH has been learning all the advantages--and problems--of our southern climate.

So welcome to Alabama. If you are zone 7b, you will be at the far edge of growing some plants you loved up north. But if you pick your microclimates, you still might put out your hostas and forsythias and such. You will be able to have the best of both worlds in 7b.

I don't want to lose what I've just typed, but you can do a search in this forum for reference books and a couple of long annotated threads will turn up, since we've discussed references before.

Welcome to Alabama, and happy gardening.

Ok, here is the other thread with lots of references mentioned. Hope you enjoy browsing.

Here is a link that might be useful: Ala garden reference books thread

Oooh, thanks, Moccasinlanding! And good luck with your MA gardening portion!