Deciduous Trees and Leaves
This time of year always reminds me why I plant deciduous woody plants instead of evergreen ones. So many folks here in Florida seem to want to forget that this part of the state is temperate - not tropical. Planting a hedge of evergreen plants is a wonderful way to create hiding cover for the songbirds I have designed my landscape for but it's the deciduous ones that do everything else they need. Deciduous trees and shrubs are self-mulching. The leaves they shed this time of year enrich the soil and this mulch decays over time and provides for the invertebrates that so many birds rely on in winter. Mulches are supposed to decay. All of the nutrients that trees and shrubs absorb during the growing season are cast off in winter and are returned to the soil to provide them again during the growing season. It's true that woody plants keep some of those nutrients inside their trunks and branches before they set their leaves downward, but the rest is shed. These nutrients ar