Plan For Change - Deciduous Plants

Red buckeye (Aesculus pavia)

Alachua buckthorn (Sideroxylon alachuense)

Perhaps it's because I get bored easily that I revel in a landscape that changes with the seasons. That is not accomplished with evergreen species very well and it definitely can't be done using the tropical nonnative species so widely used where I live in central Florida. To me, those tropical plants are not really any different than ones made out of plastic. Day after day, year after year, they grow but never really change other than that. In my mind, I could just as easily paint a picture of them on my window - there's never anything new to see. The sameness bores me to death and is the singlemost thing that causes many of my Floridian neighbors to complain that we have no seasons here.  It is actually planned blandness. I choose to plan for change.
With spring inching a bit closer with each passing day, my plants seem to be changing daily as well.  Here in my part of Florida, deciduous trees and shrubs seem to often be denigrated for being "messy", but to me this is a very distorted view of this group of interesting species. Perhaps, some of us here desperately wish to believe that they have moved here and made it to the tropics somehow. Of course, they haven't. Most of Florida is temperate and a large percentage of our natives lose their leaves in the winter.
Losing leaves is actually a wondrous thing. For one, it self-mulches the planting bed. Earlier today, I spread oak leaves given to me by a friend who does landscape work near me. While some of her clients pay her to rake away this valuable resource, I get the produce of her work. The little woods I've been planting since I arrived here about 18 months ago is still too young to produce much of its own mulch - so I add to it now. While some look at mulches as weed control or as an aesthetic entity, I view mulch as a critical component in modifying soil. Leaf mulch builds soil by ameliorating soil temperature and moisture loss, but also by decaying, it feeds an army of invertebrates, soil bacteria and nematodes that is critical to soil function and by creating the lowest/most-critical layer in the great pyramid of life.
Losing leaves also opens up the canopy and allows sunlight into the understory at a time when it is absolutely necessary. Summer sun is harsh, but winter sun is far less so and a great many plants require it to complete their growth cycle. My native azaleas, for example, need sun at this time of year to flower and produce new flower buds for next spring. They do not do nearly as well beneath the canopy of a live oak (Quercus virginiana), palms, or the tropical nonnatives, like camphors (Cinnamomum camphora), that are so often used. Spring-blooming native plants need the sunlight of winter and spring before the canopy closes again and these are most of my favorite species in my landscape. I've planned for deciduous trees in my woods.
Last, I like deciduous plants because they change with the seasons. As I stated at the beginning of this post, I love change and I can measure the seasons by those changes over the year.  Today, many of my deciduous trees and shrubs are still biding their time, but a few are sticking their leaves out willing to risk the chance of a late frost in order to get a jump on the earliest pollinators. My red buckeye (Aesculus pavia) is perhaps the furthest along. I do not yet see developing flowering buds, but it's still young and may not yet be mature enough for sex. My silver buckthorn (Sideroxylon alachuense)  is quickly budding out - at the same time it is still losing last year's leaves. This state-endangered species is one of my most beloved shrubs and one I hope someday to get fruit from and propagate.
Day after day now, for the next month or two, my landscape will change and that is exciting to me. I have no real understanding of why everyone doesn't seem to plan for this type of change.

Florida flame azalea (Rhododendron austrinum)