There Were No Fences

Yesterday, I finished most of the final planting in the area that will become my backyard woodland.  I still have to decide where I will plant the native Florida flame azaleas ( Rhododendron austrinum ) that are still waiting in pots along the edge, but I'm in no hurry right now. The extra time spent in their containers will serve to further develop their root systems (all of my new native azaleas seem to have been rather recently repotted at the nursery) and it will give me the time I need to best assess where they will do best in this newly designed plant community. Newly planted and mulched Another View -West to East Nearly everything that I have envisioned planting here has been acquired and planted. It takes time to go through the process of planning. I hope that every one of these plants will outlive me, so choosing the right species and putting them in the right place is critical and can't be done quickly. Over the years, I have made a great many mistakes in my...

Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow There is a great deal of discussion in the area where I live about what constitutes an ecologically friendly landscape. Over the past few years, the term "Florida Friendly" has entered the discussion - especially from our Cooperative Extension offices and emanating originally from our land grant university.  The concept seems to arise from the age-old concept of "first do no harm." It protects our economically powerful horticultural businesses to sell a wide range of non-native plants that do not become invasive and spread outside of where they are planted. It also gives ecologically minded folks the belief that what they are planting is fine for their landscapes. By planting "friendly" plants, we can lump together a large palette of non-natives with our native species and feel like they are somehow equivalent. It is my opinion that they often are not. What "Florida Friendly" fails to address is the very real ...

Monarch Caterpillar Gulf Fritillary Caterpillar With the arrival of Spring, there are signs of life in my new landscape. There is still far too little of it, but the signs of hope are surfacing as each day passes. For one, I have butterflies laying eggs on the host plants that I have planted. Over the past months, I have added five different species of milkweeds ( Asclepias spp.) - four natives and one that isn't. As I was sitting in my new backyard two weeks ago, a monarch appeared out of nowhere. It seemed especially drawn to the large number of blooms open on a non-native shrub that I have left intact - a yesterday, today & tomorrow. Named for its flowers that open as a deep purple and fade daily to a light lavender and then white, it has a noticeable fragrance and a deep tube that must hold enough nectar to be rewarding. Over the weeks since it burst into bloom, it has drawn the attention of a variety of pollinators besides the monarch and it is one of the very ...

The Foundation Trees and Shrubs for the New Woodland The Remaining Woody Plants (Mostly) I have begun planning for the deciduous woodland that I will soon begin planting along the northern portion of my backyard. I drove about 550 miles round trip on Monday March 11 while I was on Spring Break and purchased most of these from two of my favorite native plant nurseries in north Florida. I have limited space, so what I have selected has to meet my basic criteria - most have to serve important functions as bird plants and all have to have flowers that will interest pollinators. The choice on where to locate my woodland was simple. I've made the mistake in the past of putting too much shade on my pollinator/wildflower gardens. This time, I am completely separating the trees and shrubs from the wildflowers - at least separating the two very different landscapes from each other. My backyard woodland will mostly be for birds, though it has some significant species for pollinators...

Christmas Fern Southern Lady Fern Ferns have long held the attention of gardeners. There is a whole set of folklore about them. Over the years, I have tried my best to incorporate as many species as I can in my landscapes; not because they provide anything extra special for wildlife, but because they are both beautiful and utilitarian. As ground covers, they provide an understory that birds and other wildlife can hide under while foraging amongst the leaf litter. They help to keep the understory cooler and moister also. Over the past few weeks, I have begun adding the ferns I've collected over the years. Few nurseries carry many of them. As spore-producing plants, they are more difficult to propagate than the flowering plants that produce seed. Therefore, I zealously guard the species I have been able to accumulate. A few of my favorites have recently been added to the fringes of my new created wetland in the backyard. Over time, ferns tend to spread by their underground ...

Finished Wetland without Mulch Mulched Finished Wetland  Yesterday, I found the time I needed to finish planting my created backyard wetland. For weeks, I have been making a mental plan as to what I would add and where and on Monday (March 11) I made the trip up to the Tallahassee area to make the purchases I needed to plant my landscape - including this small wetland area. My road trip to north Florida was a whole day adventure - about 550 total miles, but purchasing the right plants from the right vendor is extremely important. Over the years, I have found too many people that settle on second or third choices because their local plant nurseries do not carry what they really wanted. I have sometimes waited a decade to locate a specimen of what I wanted or ended up growing my own from seed collected from an expedition to the plant's location at the right time of the year. Life is too short to settle - especially when it comes to plants for a living landscape. Based on my...

In the Beginning Today - March 9 2019 I am making slow, but steady progress in my front yard. I want to be sure that I am putting the right plant in the right place and I'm still deciding on what the "right plants" are. I have always had to hold myself back from planting too quickly. After nearly 40 years of designing and planting native-plant landscapes, I still often make mistakes. Some plants may be beautiful and utilitarian, but spread aggressively. Others may grow taller or wider than the place they've been given. These kinds of mistakes are normally made not from naivety, but by poor planning. I will likely still make some mistakes this time again, but they will have been made after careful deliberation about which plants I need to add and where they should go. I have been slowly whittling away at the turf grass that's inside my frame and planting it with native plants. One of the other mistakes I've learned from over the years is to only bi...

I am waiting for next week's Spring Break to make my pilgrimage to several north Florida native plant nurseries in order to purchase the plants that will form the backbone of my backyard woodland. I will be writing about that in the days ahead. Right now, I am focusing on the parts of my landscape that I have plants for - my wildflower "meadow" in the front and this created wetland in the back. So far, this wetland has experienced two major rain events of 2 inches each and functioned as I envisioned. As you can see in this photo, taken today and several days after the last big rain, the water moves away from the house and settles to the front before spilling over into the yard beyond the rock edge. This design allows for some diversity of wetness in the soil and therefore also dictates where I can plant what. If you've been following my progress in this blog, you will notice that I have been adding plants over the past weeks since I first installed it. For a perso...

With Spring nearly here in my part of Florida, I've been busy adding wildflowers, ferns, and mosses to my created wetland and to the developing wildflower meadow in the front. A few days ago, a pollinating wasp appeared out of nowhere and spent some time on the flowers of my key lime. Up until then, I had seen nothing around them and I hand pollinated some of the flowers hoping to get a few limes later this summer. I treasure my small annual harvest of these fruit and I feared that my new tree which was blooming so profusely would be giving me none this year. Later that day, I saw a lone honeybee. It has not returned, but I remain hopeful that eventually I will be visited by them routinely; not just one, but dozens at a time. It will take time, however, as there are still so few flowers that suit their needs. Less than a week ago, a friend gifted me two milkweeds for my newly created wetland - a swamp pink and and a swamp white milkweed ( Asclepias incarnata and A. perennis, re...