Planting around mailboxes?

[padawanspider]

First time post. I live down here in coastal Mississippi, zone 8b, and I'm a gardening newbie who has been getting more addicted with every plant I manage to not kill immediately. We're about to close on our first house (woohoo!) which doesn't seem to have a mailbox (foreclosure... the previous owner took pretty much everything that wasn't nailed

Comments

[edensgrief]

No comments about insects, but look up climbing black eyed susan. It's one of my favorite flowering vines!!

[padawanspider]

I'm usually not a fan of yellow flowers, but I can see how that would be lovely paired with a clematis :)

[edensgrief]

They come in white, too! :)

[helenatroy]

You can buy mixes that are designed for attracting butterflies, and you can also buy mixes that attract honeybees. I think that wasps like carrion, so you'd have to be planting one of those things that smell like rotting meet to get them & I 'spect there won't be any of those in your 'attracts butterflies' or 'attracts honeybees' mixes. If you plant Scarlett Runner Beans you might get hummingbirds. You can also look at the mixes & see what plants are common across the mixes and come up with your own scheme. Also I reccomend sweet peas - they really smell nice :)

[padawanspider]

The wasps around here like hanging out *inside* the mailboxes and building their nests in them - but I've never seen wasp nests really close to flowering plants. It just occurred to me that it might be more of a shade thing than an isolation thing.

Apparently wasps have a pretty widely varied diet, depending on the species.

[ersatz_read]

A planting that actively attracts stinging insects might not be good around the mailbox, just in case the postal carrier is allergic to bee stings.

One option for something pretty might be butterfly-pollinated flowers. Here's a Mississippi site on attracting butterflies: http://msucares.com/lawn/landscape/wildlife/butterflies.html.

Mom always planted clematis around the mailbox; she trained it up the mailbox post - no trellis required.
There are many different varieties of clematis, with different climbing habits (some will cover a trellis no problem). Many have gorgeous flowers.
In general, they prefer a sunny area but like to have their roots shaded (or at least that's what Mom always told me).
I'm in zone 5, but there are clematis for at least zone 9.

[padawanspider]

So clematis doesn't attract bees too much? I guess that really should have been one of my first questions :)

[ersatz_read]

I've never thought of them as a major bee attractor, but bees seem pretty opportunistic and will go to whatever flowers they can find. What I'm reading says they prefer the clematis with bell-shaped flowers. The wide flat flowers that many clematis have seem to attract at least a few butterflies.

[cookie_chef]

First, congratulations on your new home! We closed on our is Fall of 09' and the novelty of being a homeowner still hasn't worn off! I love every single minute of it. I'm curious to see how others respond. We've thought about putting sweet potato vine around ours...we let it run rampant last year and I think it'd be pretty on the mailbox.

ETA: The vine is the limey-green one in the picture. The picture was snagged. It's not our back yard.

[padawanspider]

Thanks! It's been such a pain to try to get this place, but if we can just get to closing it'll be so worth it.

I played with sweet potato last year; I have a garden that the neighborhood cats just wouldn't leave alone (sandy soil, perfect litterbox!) so I planted the sweet potato and suddenly there was no room for the cats to pee :D

[balboaroc]

Last year I bought a mailbox seed kit that contained nasturtium, zinnia, thunbergia (black eye susan vine), and egyptian pea vine. I really liked the way it turned out. The nasturtium went around the outer edge since they were the shortest, and the zinnia more interior since they are taller. Then on the innermost part I put up a little ring of short metal fencing though you could use anything (trellis). I planted the pea vine on the interior of that since it gets very tall and the thunbergia on outer edge of it. The only thing that didn't turn out was the thunbergia and maybe it got overshadowed by the other plants. This year I'm just doing that thunbergia, zinnia and nasturtium so hopefully it won't get overshadowed.

[padawanspider]

Thanks for the info. I hadn't seen the egyptian pea before... some of those colors are really beautiful.