Flowers – Purple Coneflower

A native to the eastern United States, purple coneflowers are found in many flower gardens. Planting purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) in the garden or flower bed draws bees and butterflies, ensuring that nearby plants have plenty of pollinators. Captured these in Blowing Rock, North Carolina.

Purple Coneflower

Flowers – Mountain Hydrangea

Mountain Hydrangea lives up to its name. It shares the showy blooms and beautiful pink or purple color of big-leaf hydrangeas, but because it grows wild on the chilly mountain tops instead of the mild seaside, it naturally developed substantially better cold tolerance. The sturdy lacecap blooms will be bright pink or deep purple-blue, depending on your soil pH, and the handsome dark green foliage resists wilting. Found these in Blowing Rock, North Carolina.

Mountain Hydrangea

Flowers – Colorful Hydrangea

Blooming in spring and summer, the Hydrangea is considered a shrub. But despite their ability to be rather large showstoppers in your yard, how to grow hydrangeas isn’t a question even the novice gardener will need to ask – these beauties all but grow themselves. Reaching up to 15 feet in height, the hydrangea grows quickly and often fills in a space in just one summer. Captured these flowers in Hickory, North Carolina.

Hydrangea
Colors of the Hydrangea

Flowers – Hydrangeas

Hydrangeas are some of the most beautiful flowers in the world with over 75 species. “Hydor” means water and “angos” means jar or vessel, emphasizing the need to water this particular flower often. Hydrangeas don’t have petals, but sepals, which are leaves that protect the flower bud. Only after they age do they turn from green to the pigmented colors you see. Here is a sampling from Hickory, North Carolina.

Colors of Hydrangeas

Linville Falls

The Linville River flows from its headwaters high on the steep slopes of Grandfather Mountain and cascades through two falls as it begins a nearly 2,000 foot descent through this rugged and spectacularly beautiful gorge. Known by the Cherokee as “the river of many cliffs,” Linville Gorge was the nation’s first officially designated wilderness area. Linville Falls is probably the most photographed waterfall in North Carolina. 

Linville Falls Landscape
Waterfalls in the Mountains

Foggy Images – Moses Cone Manor View

Low hanging clouds create a foggy scene over Bass Lake as viewed from Moses Cone Manor. Flat Top Manor, as it is most commonly known, is also called the Moses Cone Manor, and is located on Blue Ridge Parkway near Blowing Rock, North Carolina.

Cone Manor Midst Greenery
Bass Lake from Cone Manor on Foggy Day