There Were No Fences

As I sit on my porch watching the activity in my front yard, I am reminded why I keep the turf I have.  The concept among so many in the native plant world is that turf must be eliminated and replaced with a native ground cover if it's going to be a landscape that supports wildlife.  While a landscape devoid of native plants certainly does little to support the diversity of life possible, it is short-sighted to believe that it is the only solution.  My remaining patches of turf support lawn pests and I welcome them.  The glossy and white ibis that reside in my area, use my lawn to feed and that food is critical to supporting them.  The mole crickets that live just beneath the soil surface and the chinch bugs that require my St. Augustine grass are species that I would not have otherwise.  Each day, as the troop of ibis work their way across my lawn area, I am reminded that having this turf is important.  I also know that it would feed the caterpillars ...

This time of year always reminds me why I plant deciduous woody plants instead of evergreen ones.  So many folks here in Florida seem to want to forget that this part of the state is temperate - not tropical.  Planting a hedge of evergreen plants is a wonderful way to create hiding cover for the songbirds I have designed my landscape for but it's the deciduous ones that do everything else they need.  Deciduous trees and shrubs are self-mulching.  The leaves they shed this time of year enrich the soil and this mulch decays over time and provides for the invertebrates that so many birds rely on in winter.  Mulches are supposed to decay.  All of the nutrients that trees and shrubs absorb during the growing season are cast off in winter and are returned to the soil to provide them again during the growing season.  It's true that woody plants keep some of those nutrients inside their trunks and branches before they set their leaves downward, but the rest is...

I g ave a tour recently to a garden club at the USF Botanical Gardens which is always nice; speaking to folks who already love plants. Around us were a great many atala butterflies which were released here about 2 months ago as caterpillars by a Friend of the Gardens. One woman in the group was not familair with its host plant - Zamia integrifolia , Florida coontie and so I showed one to her - a plant across the path from this swarm of butterflies. It was clear from her look and her tepid response that she could not fathom why Florida coontie would be such a great plant to add to her landscape. Ours are getting ratty as they get consumed. The reason, of course is obvious as is the result of that herbivory. The Gardens now have hundreds of these butterflies. To me it seems an easy compromise. I firmly believe that if your plants are not being eaten by something, they are useless additions to your landscape. When we plant only for aesthetics, for what we see as beauty alone, we are mi...

With the writings of Dr. Talamy, there's a lot of focus on the importance of oaks in landscapes designed for birds. No argument,  but Florida has more than 20 species from large trees to almost ground cover shrubs. Are they all the same?  Are they the same in the New England landscapes that Dr. Talamy is most familiar with? Are all of the caterpillars found in New England the same as they are in Florida? I'm betting not, but I've not seen the data. The importance rests on their value as hosts for caterpillars. Right now, as I get to spend some time in my landscape I see butterflies laying eggs on a wide variety of my host plants - none of them oaks. The birds are also not feeding their nestlings. What's important now is not what was important earlier. To create a real landscape for wildlife requires diversity - food and cover for all times of the year, changing with the changing needs of what's here now and through the seasons; caterpillars and every other type of i...

  It's been a while since I've posted anything about our landscape here in Pasco County.  With the long extended drought early this summer and my new job as Director of the USF Botanical Garden, this landscape has been largely negleacted - left to its own defenses.  We don't have irrigation anywhere except for a couple of hoses; true here in the wildflower meadow as elsewhere. If you could read the rain gauge in the center of this photo, it would have not registered a single drop of rain for a nearly 2.5-month period from May-early July.  What little rain fell during this time in Tampa where I work, did not reach this landscape. Now that Idalia has left and a few other rain events have reached us, what is left are the survivors and it looks a little bleak.  We've lost a few things, but mostly everything that popped back out of the ground in early spring is still here and that's a relief.  I hate losing plants and it demonstrates the need to plant the right ...

  Hurricane Idalia just passed us this morning and left our landscape intact.  Not the same for areas near Cedar Key and the Big Bend area of Florida which were hammered by 100+ mph winds and devastating high tides.  Large swaths of Florida were recently submerged in saltwater and likely will remain so for at least several days.  As most plants are not at all adapted to saltwater inundation, a great many landscape plants and vegetation in natural areas will perish.   News reports often refer to such events as catastrophic ones, yet it is these very events that determine the ecology of an area. Wildfires, severe freezes, avalanches, and hurricanes are vital to the nature of plant communities everywhere.  They may be uncommon, but that doesn't diminish their importance.  They are so-called "keystone" events.  What we take as "normal" plant communities are their result. Florida is a unique example - at least for North America.  We are shape...