Blooming lilies with their pads covering the water at the The Highlands Biological Station, Nature Center, and Botanical Gardens, North Carolina

Blooming lilies with their pads covering the water at the The Highlands Biological Station, Nature Center, and Botanical Gardens, North Carolina
Every year around the middle of June, the grassy balds of Roan Mountain and Grassy Ridge come alive with vibrant blooms of Flame Azaleas.
A blooming Lily of the Nile ….
A beautiful Plumeria blooming against a blue sky …
Colorful Azaleas blooming in North Carolina
Not only bees and butterflies, but also people visit sunflowers.
First planted by the City of Raleigh’s public utilities department in 2010 along the Neuse River Greenway Trail, a beautiful five-acre batch of sunflowers blooms each year between early- and mid-July. For 2019, they once again called Dorothea Dix Park home.
The sunflowers serve a purpose beyond just acting as a fun summer photo hot-spot—the City harvests the sunflowers to create thousands of gallons of bio diesel, which is then processed into fuel to run tractors, trailers and farm equipment. The flowers are also excellent pollinators—the field serves as a massive pollinator habitat for bees and other species.