If you go to Clemson’s Home and Garden Information Center and search for "Selecting a Christmas Tree, Fact sheet 1750," you will find a list of all types of trees and tell you the complexity or lack of fragrance, how strong the branches are, shades of green with certain hues, and how well the needles hold on.

If you search “South Carolina Christmas Tree Association,” you’ll find ways of locating a farm near you. Click on “Member Farms” for the address, hours, types of trees available, and other services like premade garlands.

If you get a locally grown tree, the carbon footprint is as small as a reindeer’s print in the snow. On the other hand, artificial trees are made of plastic, and the carbon footprint travels from the oil fields to the manufacturer, the retailer and to your home.

When my children were little, going to get a Christmas tree was a great family adventure. With eleven-foot ceilings, we wanted a great big tree and kept a bamboo pole as a guide and we’d strap it to the top of the car to take in the field with us.

This plant's unusual leaves, similar in texture and appearance to yucca, are thick and stringy and deer and rabbits tend to avoid it – remember nothing is absolutely deer proof, but you certainly couldn’t go wrong trying it in your pollinator garden.

Rattlesnake master's slender flower stalks, topped with inch-wide inflorescences, makes a great contrast to other flowers in an arrangement and can be left tall and still be graceful.

Another of its pollinators are the predatory wasps who capture insects to line soil cavities or stems as paralyzed, but living , food for their young. Most are solitary wasps who are not especially aggressive to us.

Many people get most excited about butterflies on their pollinator plants, but Eryngium yuccafolium, flowering late summer, perhaps attracts a larger diversity of visitors than almost any other insect magnet. According to the Xerces society website --bumble bees, yellow-faced bees, sweet bees, multiple beetles and dozens of fly species.

By collecting the plant leaves' tough long fibrous veins, indigenous people could weave them to make moccasins and baskets, a better use than relying on the sap or root concoctions to treat snake bites.

This common name comes from the belief that the roots could cure rattlesnake bites - don’t try it!