Life is Emerging

Georgia aster (Symphyotrichum georgianum)

Softhair coneflower (Rudbeckia mollis)
Though it's the beginning of winter in most of the nation, it is not so apparent here in west-central Florida where today's temperatures are in the 70's F well before noon.  As a former northerner, it still takes a bit of getting used to even after 33 years here.  Not that I'm complaining about not owning a snow shovel anymore or a down jacket......
One of my great joys in living here is being able to garden year-round.  I was born to putter around a landscape and I get plenty of time to do that where I now reside. I moved into a blank canvas and for the first time in my life I've been able to truly start from scratch. It's almost amusing when I think that most people landscape their yard to raise its property value. I much prefer having nothing to start with, and if what I am now doing in this rental yard increases or decreases its economic value is immaterial to me. I simply know that it is increasing the value of my life. I need to putter and I feed off of the life it is bringing in.
Today I saw and heard a house wren.  Not the common resident Carolina wrens that reside here all the time, but a winter migrant that I have not seen before in this landscape. It strengthens my belief that things are moving in the right direction. It will be years before the woody plants I am adding reach their full potential, but even small changes have significant impacts. The house wren made that clear. Over the past few weeks, the palm warblers have too. Life is arriving to this landscape I'm working on.
The seeds I've been sowing also are emerging in their flats. It's like Christmas all over again as seedlings emerge from the previously bare soil. Some of these will be added to my landscape this coming spring, but most will end up in other people's landscapes via my hobby nursery that I call Hawthorn Hill. Seed from my landscape, taking the next step to the landscapes of others. Since arriving to Florida in 1987, I've seen a huge increase in interest about native plants and in using them to create living landscapes out of formerly sterile ones, but there still seems to be a knowledge gap about the plant choices possible. Here in Florida, we have nearly 2000 herbaceous native plants that could be considered wildflowers and grasses, but there are barely over 100 that are commonly grown commercially. Together, we need to change that. As gardeners/landscapers, we must arm ourselves better than we have regarding what species we want to use and then we need to encourage the growers to add them to their stock.  I am doing my own share of that through this nursery in my backyard and by the writing that I do. 
I'm excited about spring. If all goes well, I will have about 50 species to share.  One small step at a time.

Rayless sunflower (Helianthus radula)

Wavyleaf aster (Symphyotrichum undulatum)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Ethics of Collecting Seed

Image
I've been writing lately about seeds and using them to create what is often called a pollinator meadow. A great many of the plants in my new landscape were grown from seed. Frankly, I have always loved sowing seeds and watching them sprout. I started in early childhood and I've been doing it since. It's rewarding and the anticipation of waiting for seeds to sprout is difficult to match unless you play the lottery. I rarely purchase seeds. I collect them. When I can, I purchase a few plants of a species I wish to add to my landscape and I then collect their seed after they bloom. If a plant doesn't prosper sufficiently to set seed for me, it is not a plant I wish to continue to grow. Over the years, I've tried a great many plants that I've failed to adequately provide for. Today in my landscape, I'm trying a few that I've never tried before. The exceptions come from plants that are not available in the trade. To grow these from seed, I need to collect
Read more

Wildflower Meadows - The Importance of Grasses

Image
A Natural Wildflower "Meadow" - Apalachicola National Forest I grew up in the prairie Midwest and was fortunate to have been caught up in the prairie restoration movement that blazed brightly in the last few decades of this past century. Very little of our original prairie ecosystems remain as the rich prairie soils were quickly converted to agricultural uses as European settlers swarmed their way over the continent.  These ecosystems are extremely diverse, regardless of where they occur. From the tall-grass prairies of the Midwest to the rockland prairies of the Mid-South and the true dry prairie systems here in Florida where I now reside, there are several universal characteristics - they are some of the most species diverse systems in the world and they are dominated by grasses. Grasses, in all their many shapes and forms, are what form the foundation of any "meadow." That must also be true for all the "wildflower meadows" I see extolled on s
Read more

A Pollinator Garden is More than Wildflowers

Image
A natural grass-dominated meadow in the shade Splitbeard bluestem - Andropogon ternarius Lopsided Indiangrass - Sorghastrum secundum Sites on social media that are promoting pollinator gardens are rife with posts about wildflowers. Folks seeking to make their landscapes pollinator friendly seem to be almost-universally focused on wildflowers. What these well-meaning people seem to not understand is the importance of native grasses. Meadows, prairies, and other wildflower-dominated systems are mostly grass. Grasses form the backbone of every one of these plant communities. It isn't the wildflowers. They simply provide most of the color - but a living landscape is not about color, it's about creating habitat, and this habitat requires us to incorporate native grasses. It is true that the vast majority of grasses, and their graminoid relatives, are wind pollinated. They do not provide nectar and pollen for the most part, but despite that they are significant. More s
Read more