We’ve been growing bee balm (or wild bergamot, or monarda) for many years. It started as one large clump, and then we divided it into two sections. Each year it’s been the same pale purple color.

Last year there were a couple of volunteer blossoms, but this summer new growth is popping up all over. The first new plants were purple, too, but then I noticed a pink flower…

…which turned into a pink patch.

Later I found a nearly white patch, then several more clusters like this.

And finally, I found a couple of blossoms that were a darker purple.

Those are all the color possibilities that minnesotawildflowers.info lists for bee balm, all right in our own front yard.

Plant source: To the best of my memory, Roseville arboretum end-of-summer sale, 2011

It started with a small patch of fleabane that popped up in the lawn right behind the house in early June.

Two weeks later came several right at the edge of the railing in the most shady spot of the front yard. There have been a couple here before, but this year they really took off. I called it a “fleabane forest” on Instagram.

Little did I know that it would be nothing compared to what happened in the backyard in July: a roughly six feet-by-six feet spot of solid fleabane.

I don’t care that it’s considered weedy; it’s cheery, and it is native.

Minnesotawildflowers.info recognizes three kinds of fleabane in Minnesota. I am pretty sure the early ones were Philadelphia fleabane. I’m leaning toward prairie fleabane for both of the other locations, and perhaps the difference in bloom time is simply because of different amounts of sunlight. All three varieties that grow in Minnesota are native, though, so I’m not overly concerned about getting the correct identification.

• Annual fleabane
• Philadelphia fleabane
• Prairie fleabane

I probably shouldn’t admit this, but I garden without paying much attention to where plants are supposed to grow. I’ll try most flowers once, and if they don’t like the spot, I don’t usually try again. With some notable exceptions (bloodroot keeps breaking my heart), plants will grow in my yard, whether in full sun in the front or in part-shade to mostly-shade in the back.

With that said, and perhaps not surprisingly, I’ve noticed that most of the summer prairie flowers in my yard bloom earlier and more vigorously in full sun.

All comparison photos were taken on July 24; sun first, then shade.

Bee balm was the plant that made me think of comparing the locations:

Yellow coneflower:

Joe-pye weed, just opening up in both spots, but a little further ahead in the full sun:

Pearly everlasting — all over in the front yard, but struggling to make it through all the creeping charlie in the backyard:

Dramatic difference for the black-eyed susan — a huge cluster in the front yard, but just one small plant in the backyard:

(Much more to come about the black-eyed susan situation in the front yard.)

Purple coneflower — not even a comparison because at that point, there were none in the backyard (and even today, August 8, there is just one).

I’m not ready to attribute all of the front-yard success to amount of sunlight alone. For example, in the case of the black-eyed susan, in previous years the results were reversed (few in the sun, many in the shade).

And even in part shade, the flowers usually do grow, just later, like the same backyard bee balm location, taken on August 7: