There Were No Fences

A few weeks ago my new neighbor decided to severely prune two of my trees that are near our property line while I was away for the weekend.  What once provided an ecological and effective screen was removed and hauled to the curb for trash pickup.  These were both trees that I had grown from seed and species not commonly grown commercially and they meant a lot to me.  The silk bay ( Persea humilis ) seed came from a plant in a Lake Wales Ridge scrub that I visited several times a year for at least two decades.  It has since been cleared and a house with a turfgrass yard has now replaced it.  The sandhill haw ( Crataegus lassa ) seed came from a few ripe haws that I collected near the entrance of Torreya State Park. The tree was one that my friend, Gil Nelson, identified for me or I would have thought it was just a variety of summer haw ( C . flava ).  Plants I've grown from seed always have special meaning to me as they conjure up memories of excursions or ...

Nearly a year ago, Jane and I set out a small dresser that we had no use for anymore.  The plan was to fit it into the back of my car and take it to a secondhand store as a donation, but it didn't quite turn out the way we planned.  The dresser was soon colonized by honeybees and that's where things stand today.  I am a beekeeper with no knowledge of beekeeping. Although honeybees are not native, I welcomed them anyhow. My thought was that they would assist in the pollination of our landscape plants. Species like my scaleleaf aster ( Symphyotrichum adnatum ) have never been adequately pollinated by the native bees in our landscape - largely because it blooms so late in the year that the native bees and butterflies have largely gone to rest for the winter.  Honeybees remain active year-round as long as temperatures are above freezing.   There is a lot of controversy surrounding the impact that honeybees have on native species.  I do not believe that the...

  As we embark on our mission to change the world through our landscaping, we cannot ignore the impact our neighbors will have on our success.  After all, the natural world does not respect the presence of property lines  and what we find our landscapes surrounded by is what the rest of the natural world actually sees. When I lived in Seminole with my ex-wife, migratory birds found our landscape and very rarely could be seen beyond the property lines of our typical residential lot.  The exceptions were the ground-foraging species - the thrushes, ovenbirds, worm-eating warblers, and the water thrushes.  Our neighbors to the west also had a cluster of mature live oaks adjacent to our property-line fence and between us, we had a significant expanse of open understory covered by leaf litter.  Each year during migration all of these birds visited and foraged across both sides of our fence.  I am convinced that, without their extra habitat, we would have bee...

  Nearly six months ago, Jane and I set a dilapidated small dresser out on our front porch with the intention of eventually getting it over to a local secondhand store, but we procrastinated and it started to fall apart.  About the same time, I noticed that it had been taken over by a colony of honeybees.  They've been fun to watch these past months and, although we have no intention of trying to harvest honey, my thought was that they would play an important part in pollinating our wildflowers in late fall and early winter when the native bees had called it quits for the year.  My scaleleaf aster ( Symphyotrichum adnatum ) in particular always blooms so late that I do not get viable seed and I've always wanted to add this species to what I can offer others. The honeybee in the photo above is nectaring on a late-summer aster ( S . lateriflorum ) so it made sense to me that they would use the scaleleaf as well.  They haven't touched it, however. Over the course o...

Part of the USF Wildflower Meadow Post Hurricane Milton Hurricane Helene struck the west coast of Florida but did very little damage to the landscape I've been working on at the University of South Florida Botanical Gardens.  We dodged that bullet, but Milton was another thing.  It made landfall just south of us and created havoc with both its 100+ mph winds and its heavy rains.  What had once been a vibrant and diverse wildflower meadow with at least 15 species of native grasses and 40 species of native wildflowers was submerged under several inches of water for 2-3 days with 2 large and toppled canopy trees lying on top of it and buried beneath 6-12 inches of pine bark mulch.  When we finally were able to remove the trees and rake off the mulch there was very little green poking out of the saturated soil.  It was a heartbreaking sight, quite frankly. We had spent nearly 2 years tending this area, adding plants from our own propagation or from native plant nurs...

As I sit on my porch watching the activity in my front yard, I am reminded why I keep the turf I have.  The concept among so many in the native plant world is that turf must be eliminated and replaced with a native ground cover if it's going to be a landscape that supports wildlife.  While a landscape devoid of native plants certainly does little to support the diversity of life possible, it is short-sighted to believe that it is the only solution.  My remaining patches of turf support lawn pests and I welcome them.  The glossy and white ibis that reside in my area, use my lawn to feed and that food is critical to supporting them.  The mole crickets that live just beneath the soil surface and the chinch bugs that require my St. Augustine grass are species that I would not have otherwise.  Each day, as the troop of ibis work their way across my lawn area, I am reminded that having this turf is important.  I also know that it would feed the caterpillars ...