There Were No Fences

My wildflower garden - January 30 Another section There is a prevailing gardening myth about keeping a garden tidy. You shouldn't - at least not through the winter months. Folks that "deadhead" the spent flower stalks of the their wildflowers and trim back the dead leaves of their grasses are not doing it to help their plants, and doing so dramatically reduces the winter habitat required by a great many species of wildlife. I'm sure that some of my neighbors drive by my house (as this garden is in my front yard) and wonder when I will "clean" this up. The answer is not anytime soon. Even though it is relatively warm here, the vast majority of my pollinators are taking a winter break. Nearly all of my butterflies are too. The winter-resident migratory birds are looking for food and part of their diet at this time of year is seeds - as well as whatever invertebrates they can find in the leaf litter and dead stems. This wildflower area may not look as...

Florida flame azalea ( Rhododendron austrinum ) January 27, 2020 This blog is most often writings that document the changes in my yard as I take a typical largely lifeless turf-dominated landscape to one dominated by natives and the life that it provides for. Secondarily, it is a place to express my wider opinions and thoughts on native plant landscaping in general. Having arrived in Florida 33 years ago and charged with developing a program to certify urban landscapes as wildlife habitat, I've had a good many years to observe and form opinions - and like any good observer, some of my opinions have changed over the years as I've gathered data. One issue that I am adamant about is the need to use plants for their ecological roles above any aesthetic roles that they might also have. This is true for native AND non-native plants. I no longer view the world of landscaping as a native vs non-native issue, but an issue of ecological significance vs ecological insignificance. A...

Red-bellied woodpecker and marlberry ( Ardisia escallonoides ). Photo by Christina Evans by permission As I've written previously, my developing landscape includes mostly deciduous trees and shrubs for birds. The flowers produced by these plants are significant for pollinators, a few serve as host plants, and nearly every one of them produces fruit for birds. Birds need invertebrates to raise their young, but a great many of them also rely on seeds and small fruit. Even insect-eating birds, like woodpeckers, will use fruit at certain times of the year. The high energy of invertebrates is required for the growth of nestlings, but fruit is an integral part of most adult birds' adult diets. That is especially true at times of the year when invertebrates are especially hard to find. Most invertebrates, even here in central Florida where I reside, are dormant in the winter. Some can be found under the bark of "shaggy" barked trees and beneath leaf litter, but fruit is...

White peacock on Coreopsis Cloudless sulfur Monarch on Sky blue Salvia With all the attention (deservedly so, I might add) on bees and pollinator gardens these days, the plight of butterflies seems to be taking a back seat. I regret that as butterflies are not just beautiful creatures, they are an integral part of any well-designed pollinator garden. Bees are integrally tied to native wildflowers for their nectar needs and different species require different habitat conditions to produce their offspring. Butterflies are no different except they also need host plants for their caterpillars. That requires us to not only provide the proper nectar plants, but to add their host plants as well and that takes some planning. Butterflies are not a "freebie" that simply comes about by planting a pollinator garden. A few common lawn weeds serve that purpose for a few species, but to do things right means we have to also purposely add the plants that don't just pop up ...

Littlehip haw ( Crataegus spathulata ) in flower  I am carefully building my native plant "forest" in the backyard to support birds. As I've written previously in this blog (and in my wildlife landscaping book), a landscape for birds requires us to consider a much broader look at what constitutes food other than invertebrates. Though it is true that the vast majority of songbirds feed their young almost exclusively on invertebrates, it also is true that most switch their diet to one largely based on fruit and seeds during the winter - and a large percentage of songbirds that overwinter in my area are not here during the nesting season. Because of that, I actually have more species of birds dependent on my seeds and fruit than I have on my invertebrates. In the winter, there are very few active invertebrates in my landscape. For the most part, butterflies and moths are lying low and waiting for spring to come. If they are overwintering as a caterpillar or pupa, they a...

Female blackpoll warbler and a spider Photo by Christina Evans with permission I find that there is a great awakening among gardeners about the importance of invertebrates to birds. This new awareness is largely attributed to the writings of Dr. Doug Tallamy and his book Bringing Nature Home . National groups like the Audubon Society that once virtually ignored native plants and landscapes have now adopted an entire public outreach program designed to make landscapes better for birds. Thirty years ago, I was rarely offered a chance to speak to groups like these. That has changed. Social media groups are now flourishing - built up by an interest in native plants, pollinators, and the need to make major changes to the way we landscape. All of this is exciting, but I am also frustrated that the focus of so many of these initiatives falls short of the mark. The goal of creating a truly living landscape, like I am trying to do here in Holiday, Florida, is to create habitat and habitat i...

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...

Wood stork - Back yard, January 2, 2020 Palm warbler - Back yard Living with wildlife is something I've always treasured. I suspect that's true for anyone that reads this blog. It's always been hard for me to fathom why my feelings on this are not shared by everyone. As I look out at the mostly dead landscapes of my neighbors, it's obvious that most don't care - or, perhaps, they just don't know how much power they wield in sharing their landscapes with other living creatures. I've been "attracted" to wildlife my entire life. I still have all the stuffed animals I was given from my childhood and I'm not ashamed to admit that I've added a lot more since those years. All of the coloring books I had as a child were of wild animals and most of the stories I treasured were about them. When challenged to choose what my adult profession would be, I chose between working with wildlife or being a professional baseball player. As I matur...

"Dead" gum bumelia - Sideroxylon lanuginosum Re-emerging from the root Plants are tenacious. I often think that we could learn a lot from them if only we really paid attention to what they have to tell us. In the past, I wrote about this plant and had given it up for dead. I feel that I had every right to give up on it. More than four months ago, the top started showing signs of death and in the ensuing months, the upper stem died.  I watched it daily looking for signs of life, but none appeared. It was dead and eventually the entire stem turned brittle enough to snap off at the ground level. This was an especially tough setback for me and my developing woodland as this was an especially difficult plant for me to find. Gum bully ( Sideroxylon lanuginosum ) is a wonderful small tree. The spring blooms are one of the best magnets for pollinators I've found during my 33 years of working with Florida native plants and the deep purple fruit are prized by songbirds. It...

Honeybee & Starry rosinweed Palm warbler - Edge of my woodland Today is the start of a new year and that brings out all of the optimism most of us manage to muster during the year. In actuality, each new day is the start of a new beginning, but today I'll simply embrace the optimism I feel around me. My landscape is developing day by day and the life I see in it increases. When I first moved here in early October of 2018, there was virtually nothing alive in my landscape. After several months, I saw my first regular pollinator - a southeastern blueberry bee using the wall of non-native morning glory that covers my side and back yard fence. I had to hand pollinate the flowers on my key lime because nothing visited them. I had moved into a virtual desert. Although my landscape has had its setbacks, we are moving mostly forward. The wildflower garden in the front now has about 60 species and there is essentially no room to add more. I've collected seed to sow for nex...