There Were No Fences

Camphor Tree in my front yard Black Swallowtail caterpillar feeding  on curled parsley Dr. Tallamy has done a great service to those of us that wish to create more life in our landscapes. His book, Bringing Nature Home , has served as a guidepost to a great many and is frequently cited for his early chapters that extol the virtues of native plants and the detriment caused by the all-too-common traditional landscapes of non-native ones. As my ex-wife, Alexa, used to tell me - he keeps the message simple and that is the most effective way to communicate what I've been trying to say for well over 30 years now. The only problem with simplicity is that it is often too simple. It is too often too easy to take the simple message and embrace the whole thing without digging a bit deeper beneath the surface. Life is not simple and it is not comprised of simple messages. The message that native plants are good for wildlife and that non-native ones are responsible for the huge declin...

Gum Bumelia ( Sideroxylon lanuginosa ) The rains have arrived over the past few weeks. With each day, a new wave of storms materializes off the coast and sweeps across my landscape. Our landscapes are not defined by what is normal, but by what isn't. Abiotic factors such as rain and freezing events are predictable even if uncommon. They reset the biological tapestry of an area - winnowing out those species and individuals that had appeared to be part of the normal landscape, but were secretly not.  It is easy to hide out with your neighbors, pretending to fit in with the neighborhood, when, in fact, you're a fraud...... This is just as true for our human-manufactured landscapes as it is for natural ones. With the advent of the summer rainy season, I've been waiting a bit nervously to see how my developing landscape would fare. These abnormally heavy rains have made the situation even more nerve wracking.  I've been working with Florida native plants now for more th...

Grasshopper on Rudbeckia laciniata As a child growing up in Madison Wisconsin there were grasshoppers everywhere. I have not seen one in my landscape since moving to Florida and setting up landscapes in suburbia. They just don't exist. If someone would have told me as a child that I would be excited to share my yard with grasshoppers someday, I wouldn't have believed them. Two days ago, I found the first grasshopper in my newly developing landscape and I feel like I am now finally making real progress. Although those of us that garden with native plants are rightfully concerned with the crisis facing pollinators, the problem is much more deeply seated than this. Developed landscapes have lost much more than pollinators. We have lost insects - period, and that is serious. Dr. Tallamy, in Bringing Nature Home , has opened up many people's eyes to the loss of caterpillars as bird food, but birds feed their young (and themselves) on a much broader diet than the caterpillar...

Deciduous Woods along the North Side of the Backyard Planting a pollinator garden is a relatively easy task if success can be measured only in how fast one sees results. As I write this, I've successfully attracted a wide variety of bees, pollinating wasps, and butterflies to my front yard wildflower area. I've still got a long way to go, before I'm finished with it, but it is about three-quarters planted and most of the wildflowers and native grasses that I've added are on target to bloom this year - if they haven't started already. There are still too few butterflies using it with regularity and no bumblebees, but I expect that to change - at least as far as the butterflies are concerned, as their host plants mature a bit more. A landscape for birds and other wildlife, however, takes patience. Birds need a variety of things for the plants to be considered habitat. In my former home, the mature canopy provided excellent foraging habitat for migrating songbirds...

Wildflower Garden, 10 July 2019 As I continue to plant my wildflower garden, I am continuously reminded that the success of my plants lies more in the drainage of my soil than the amount of moisture it has. To explain... the great diversity of plants I am adding run the spectrum of Florida plants that find their homes in scrub to moist flatwoods. These various habitats in nature vary in the types of soil they typically have. Scrub and sandhill occur in the most well-drained sands found in Florida while flatwoods can often have standing water for short periods of time in the summer rainy season. What all of them share, however, is moisture at the root depth. It's not as much about some of these plants needing moisture because they all do. What they need as much as anything is sufficient drainage so that the moisture gets to their roots and that lies in drainage. Typical home landscapes build up organic matter beneath the lawn grass. Removing the turf beneath this lawn does not ...

The leaves of this newly planted black-eyed susan are chlorotic I've been busy planting more wildflowers in my developing landscape. Many of my newly planted wildflowers show signs of being confined to a pot in standard potting soil. Although they are growing and developing root systems, they are not doing as well in the pots as they do in the ground. It always amazes me how quickly new plants develop once they are planted. The reason lies in the soil, not the "dirt."  Healthy soil is one of the most vital links to healthy plants and the reason lies in the fact that soil is much more than the dirt we pot them in. Potting soil is, by design, relatively sterile. It is a mixture of organics and inert ingredients such as perlite and wood chips - used to improve drainage. A good potting soil also comes with some time-release fertilizer. This gets seedlings off to a decent start once they are planted, but this good start often follows with relatively slow growth from that ...

Native Florida Butterfly Milkweed ( Asclepias tuberosa ) Native Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea ) Where your plants originate is important. Just because a species is native to your state does not mean that it is the same plant throughout its range. In order to adapt to a wide range of growing conditions, plants form distinct ecotypes throughout their range and these are very different plants even though they may look the same. Growing conditions in New England or the Midwest pose very different needs within the local plant population and evolution has shaped each to perform and thrive over time in those specific conditions. It is not reasonable to expect that these plants can somehow make the transition to Florida, for example, where I now garden. Two of the most common cases in point are those I've photographed above - now living in my central Florida landscape. These often confound the gardeners I share this state with. The reason sometimes lies in simply putting t...

Wild Petunia - Ruellia caroliniensis As I continue to plant, remove the previous grass, and see the impacts of summer rains and exposed soil, more and more seedlings emerge from the bare soil I have created in my wildflower area. The vast majority of them are weeds and I weed in this area daily. In my mind anyway, a weed is anything I did not intend to plant. It doesn't matter to me if it has some tenuous connection to nativity. A great many things that are native have no place in my wildflower collection. A good example is the native yellow wood sorrel ( Oxalis corniculata ). Yellow wood sorrel has little appeal to me as I have no idea what its presence supports in this landscape. It pops up everywhere in what is left of my lawn and it is welcome there, but if left to its own devices it would pop up everywhere among my wildflowers too. I prefer to use that space for species that I have targeted and whose roles I am trying to foster. I have purposely planted in such a way that...

Removing the Last of the Grass Grass Removed. Plants to be Added Seedlings Planted A good summer rain arrived a few nights ago and it just seemed like a good day to finish removing the grass that remained inside the frame and plant a few of the seedlings that I've been growing in my hobby nursery - Hawthorn Hill.  I didn't wake up with this notion in my head, but as I surveyed the progress of the plants that I already had planted previously it just seemed right. I am often asked about when the best time of year is to add plants. In my mind, it's when the mood strikes AND when you have the time necessary to commit to nurturing them until they are established. It's really no different than adding a new pet to the household. New plants need time and attention. Native or not, you cannot simply plant them, water them in, and step away. Over the years, I have heard it said too many times by well-meaning folks - native plants don't need extra care or watering...