Okay, I'm a newbie to gardening. Having lived my adult life in apartments, and spending my childhood so allergic I was stuck inside most all spring, summer and fall, what I've done has been poor attempts at container gardening. Pretty depressing since I always seem to kill of 90% of my indoor plants through the winter.

This year I am doing actual in ground planting. Theme is fairy garden. Smallish area with a lot of birdfeeders (buying a GOOD hummingbird feeder this week) and feeding squirrels, chipmunks, etc.

So far doing moon flowers & morning glories along fence lines. Going to seed for columbine along wall under window. Looking for native plants that will survive the hot, humid, dry summer here as well as the likely over-rain in May (I am in Indianapolis so of course it rains like crazy in May), etc. Something to border the patio, plant around a smallish birdbath, and in amongst the columbine since they won't bloom this year.

Received some great suggestions in the new gardener forum...but could use a little more information on what will best tolerate the conditions and poor soil here. I'd say its clay type soil...most of year appears light dry and very hard. Amazingly enough as I started digging into it and turning it this spring I found tons of earthworms. Some of that may be because I keep dumping potting soil from dead houseplants out around the areas I was digging...I generally use miracle gro potting soil...so it has received some help from that.

Thanks for any resources you can point me to. I can try to pick up books at the library if you have good suggestions.

Suz