I said COONTIE, Not Cootie!

One of the most neglected, unglamorous and trouble-free plants in my yard is the coontie (Zamia floridana).  This native Florida shrub is a member of an ancient family of plants called "Cycads" that have flourished on our planet since the time of dinosaurs. They are true "living fossils" worthy of a place of honor in modern suburban landscapes.

In more recent times (the last 600 years or more), bread made from flour from the coontie's stem sustained the native Calusa and Timucua peoples of Florida. 

But it's not their impressive lineage that has made me fall in love with them. It's their indestructibility. 

Put them in full or part shade, in just about any well-drained soil, and they'll thrive. They can even survive in full sun, though I don't think they look entirely happy there.

They are bonafide water misers, among the most drought-tolerant plants I know. I never feel the need to water mine, even in our rain-starved spring months. They do occasionally get scale and sooty mold, but neither are a huge problem and can be managed with a dousing of insecticidal soap or Neem oil. 

Coonties are good choices for coastal landscapes because they tolerate salt pretty well. And they scoff at cold weather. What's not to love?

I have about a dozen coonties in my landscape. I now know that there is some point during the late winter or spring when they will look like they're about to croak. Their fronds turn brown and droopy. Perhaps they suffer from some botanical Seasonal Affective Disorder. 

But just when I start to get really worried about them, they bounce back. So now I don't worry anymore.

Coonties are very slow-growing. It's illegal to harvest them from the wild, so the coonties you see in landscapes are all nursery stock. It at least 3-4 years for a coontie to reach a marketable 1-gallon size. Nursery growers invest a lot of time in them; that's why they are fairly expensive plants. 

But, Holy Cycad, are they resilient and durable! I love to see them in mass plantings, where they make a beautiful, fern-like groundcover up to 3 feet high. 

Female coontie cone

I love plants that are dioecious, meaning they have both male and female specimens. The female coontie produces a large, chubby seed pod that resembles a pine cone. The male's cone is much smaller and more slender. That's the only way to tell them apart.

Male coontie cone

The seedpods split open and eventually drop large seeds covered with a rubbery, orange coating called a "sarotesta" (No, I'm not that smart. I looked it up in the University of FLorida's EDIS plant info database!) In nature, this outer layer is removed by passing through the digestive systems of animals, being eaten by bugs, or by naturally disintegrating over time.

One year I tried to raise my own coontie pups. I eagerly scooped up the seeds, put them in a bucket of water to soften the tough orange coating and then used a pocketknife to scrape off some of the coating and nick, or "scarify" the hard pod beneath. 

I planted the seeds in nursery pots in loose-packed, well-drained soil, and waited. And waited. And waited.

Months later, a few of the seeds sprouted. Well, three out of 25 to be exact. Not exactly a result to crow about.

Since then, I decided to let Mother Nature do the germinating for me. Each year, I wait till the babies pop up, then I transplant them into pots and give them away. Sharing the "cooties." To me, that's what Florida gardening is all about.

Do you have this tough-as-nails Florida native in your landscape?

New Year's Resolutions for True Floridians

Let's make 2013 the year we kick our bad gardening habits and embrace gardening like the Floridians we are now, no matter where we came from or how we got here.

So fellow Sunshine Staters, back away from the power tools and pesticides, take a deep breath, and repeat after me: 

-- I WILL remove a small section of grass in my yard and replace it with... NO, not rocks!! How about a curvy bed of shrubs and groundcovers, or a colorful butterfly garden, a small water feature, or even a flagstone or pea gravel pathway?  

Curving walkways like this one featured on the 2012 Native Landscape Tour in Pinellas add visual interest to a landscape. Remember: there are very few straight lines in Nature!

-- I WILL remember rain doesn't water fertilizer in, it washes it away, straight into our bays, lakes, rivers and the Gulf of Mexico. I WON'T use fertilizer in the summer, and I WILL use slow-release fertilizer the rest of the year to prevent water pollution.

-- I WILL use the Right Plant in the Right Place. I WON'T be taken in by all those pretty plants in the nursery or garden center that rope me into those impulse buys. Instead, I will do my homework first, so I buy only the pretty ones that will actually thrive in the growing conditions they'll face in my yard.

-- I WILL plant at least one native plant in my landscape this year.

Native Dotted horsemint
(Monarda punctata) 

-- I WILL have my lawn mower blade sharpened this year, and make sure the blade is set at the right height for my grass (3-4" for St. Augustine) so my long-suffering lawn won't be scalped like a Parris Island recruit. Booyah!!

-- I WILL finally learn how to use the timer on my irrigation system so I can turn it OFF when I don't need to water every week, such as during winter when grass is dormant, or summer when it rains all the time.

 -- I WILL learn to love mulch with abandon, except for cypress mulch. I WON'T buy that, because it's made from cypress trees that Mother Nature needs in her swamps.

-- I WON'T scream and run for the poison when I see a bug (even a Big! Hairy! Spider!) in my garden. I WILL remember that 99% of all insects are either beneficial to us, or harmless to us, including spiders.

Reprinted from an article I wrote for the December issue of the Be Floridian newsletter
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   So, which of these resolutions are you ready to tackle in this new year? How many have you already checked off in your landscape?

  

Happy New Year from our Bay-Friendly Landscape to Yours!

Holiday Postcards from the Garden

Nature is putting on quite a holiday show around the Bay-Friendly Landscape this year.

With another warm start to our winter, and a summer of abundant rainfall that sparked a hyperactive growth frenzy, our plants are decked out in some impressive holiday finery.
 

The wild coffee is laden with deep-red berries, much cherished by cardinals, blue jays and mockingbirds.

East Palatka holly

Berries also abound on our pretty east Palatka holly trees. The mockingbirds are especially fond of these berries. Now is a perfect time to purchase native hollies because you can tell which are female and produce berries. You can plant them now too -- they are very cold-hardy.

A bevy of bees zooms to and from the red passion flowers and the red pentas, emerging from the blossoms with pollen-dusted legs that make them look like they're wearing yellow hip waders. The passionvine, like our native firebush, typically dies back to the ground in winter, only to re-emerge with gusto in the Spring. Last winter was so warm neither missed a beat and bloomed straight through the season.

Passion flower

Even the cassia tree is still producing  blooms, a fact that has not escaped the attention of the sulphur butterflies  flitting about.

Although our plants have not yet decided to take a winter nap, Rick and I have definitely entered our dormant period. This is the time of year when yard maintenance is almost non-existent -- confined only to occasional weeding and blowing leaves in the walkways back into our landscape beds.

Cassia bloom

Now, finally, we can sit outside on our deck and enjoy the fruits of our labor without being drenched in sweat or eaten alive by mosquitoes. We can indulge in our favorite adult beverages while the wonderful scent of the newly planted sweet almond bush wafts over us. That is one fragrant plant!

Our backyard dressed for a holiday garden party

Winter may be coming -- in fact, I hope it is. I look forward to cold weather as a refreshing and welcome change.

But in the meantime, we're enjoying a real Florida Christmas. Hope your "decorations" are just as lovely!

The Native Touch

Last weekend was the annual Native Landscape Tour sponsored by the Pinellas chapter of the Florida Native Plant Society. I always try to attend this to support the Native Plant Society and to see how homeowners in diverse neighborhoods are converting their landscapes to natives, or blending natives with more traditional landscapes.

This year I attended the South Pinellas tour on Saturday, which featured eight sites in St. Petersburg -- six homes, a fire station and the Wildflower Walk at Boyd Hill Nature Preserve.

Here are some of the great landscapes and lovely native Florida plants I saw:

Who wouldn't want to sit in this garden and read a book?

Dotted horsemint with its dainty purple-pink blooms

Two views of the front yard of a historic Craftsman bungalow in St. Pete

This backyard featured a narrow turfgrass path surrounded by a variety of mature native shrubs and trees. Many of the plants here were planted more than a decade ago.

I love the soft inviting look of this beautiful garden filled with nectar plants for pollinators

Sword fern + pumpkins = A touch of autumn

I am adding more natives to my garden each year. They are the most amiable of plants, hardy and highly tolerant of Florida's feast-or-famine rainfall patterns. They generally don't need fertilizer or pesticides.  They provide food, shelter and nest sites for wild creatures, and the list of native plants used by pollinating insects is longer than I am tall.

But mostly, I like natives because they are part of our collective heritage. Many native Florida plants are not found anywhere else. They remind me that I live in a special place called Florida and that, even though I was born in another state, I am now, and always will  be, a Floridian.

The First Fleeting Signs of Fall

Anticipation is building. 

I sense it, my cats sense it (even the fat fluffy one occasionally zooms around in a spontaneous show of joie de vivre) and my garden senses it. Fall is coming!

Leaves are slowly wafting down from the elms in the back yard. The elms have a gentle, soothing leaf drop. By contrast, the giant live oak in the front seems to dump all its leaves at once. I'll glance out the window one day and voila! another thick layer of leaves will be added to the mulch. 

Fall peeked around the corner in Tampa for a few days, with refreshingly cool mornings and oh-so-welcome lower humidity. Now it's gone back into hiding. But it will return, hopefully to stay, very soon.

Luscious beautyberry, a native Florida shrub

Fall in my garden actually began back in August, when I noticed the faint blush of purple creeping over the berries on my beautyberry bush. The berries are now completely and gloriously that rich plum color that make this shade-lover such a showstopper.

Narrow-leaved sunflower
 about to open

The blossoms on the narrow-leaved sunflowers in the butterfly bed are just beginning to open. Last year, these native sunflowers, also called swamp sunflowers, reached a towering height of 11 feet. This year, I cut them back to about two feet in early July to keep them in check. They are topping out at a more reasonable 6 feet this year.

Mexican sage

The beautiful thick Mexican sage is in full bloom, delighting the bees who emerge from the conical purple bloom stalks wearing yellow "hip waders" of pollen. Bees are very, very bizzzzy right now in my yard.

What's your favorite harbinger of Fall in the garden?

We've had a flurry of butterflies over the past couple of weeks. They seem to be in a hurry to get their last nectar-sipping and egg-laying completed before winter.

I cut back my scarlet milkweed recently
   so it won't tempt migrating monarchs
 to stick around my yard for the winter. 

I just cut back my non-native scarlet (tropical) milkweed for the winter, after hearing warnings from a researcher who spoke at the state Florida Native Plant Society conference this year about the potential for this milkweed (which blooms all year in Florida, unlike our native milkweeds) encouraging migratory monarch butterflies to stick around instead of wintering in Mexico. When they do, their progeny almost inevitably fall victim to a cold snap. 

Rick and I saw this first-hand a few years ago, We watched a  monarch emerge from its chrysalis one cold morning in December, only to watch it flutter feebly for an hour before falling to the ground and dying.

So, just to be safe, I began cutting back my milkweed in early September. 

One of my favorite fall garden beauties is the native muhly grass. This thick, clumping grass blooms only in the Fall. Most of the year it's a Plain Jane content to blend into the background. But when those feathery pink plumes appear, it takes center stage. 

So far, I've seen only a single pink tuft. But as we know,  the best things in life -- and in our gardens -- are worth waiting for. 

I'm enjoying the wait. 

My beautyberry shrub surrounded by dwarf Walter's viburnum, holly fern,
cardboard palm and liriope

Rain, Rain, Go Away!

I know. I know. Gardeners are supposed to love rain.

And I do. Really.

But this is getting ridiculous.

My yard has received more than 10 inches of rain in the last 10 days. And, as  I write this, we are receiving still more rain from Tropical Storm Isaac. Since June, we've had several weeks of rainfall exceeding four inches. The first two days of June brought us a 6-inch deluge!

I know exactly how much rain we've had because we monitor our rain gauges carefully ( see "The tool I can't live without"). And I'm beginning to think I need to start building an ark.

Parts of my backyard are underwater 

Last week, the soil finally became so saturated that water began ponding up in the backyard. The 2.5 inches we've received so far from Isaac has created even larger ponds in the yard, with water seeping into our detached shed. Rick had to pull out his ancient rubber Wellies to stay dry on his forays to and from the shed.

A river runs through it!

Now, many of my plants think this is wonderful, and are partying like they were just chosen to appear in the Epcot Flower and Garden Festival. They appear to be growing about 6 inches a week (scorpion tail, Mexican sage, passionvine, and chenille plant among them). So much for my low-maintenance yard: It took me 1 1/2 hours one day just to beat the butterfly bed back into submission with pruners. 

This passion flower is loving the rain!

But my yard is landscaped largely with tough, drought-tolerant specimens, and some of these look none too happy about now. The beach sunflower is about to rot, the muhly grass looks mushy and the bulbine tubers are downright spongy. 

Can we just have a week to dry out?


Yes, this is Florida - where it's always either feast or famine, flood or drought. Gotta roll with it. Or is that row?

You're Invited to a Plant Swap!

The first-ever Be Floridian Plant Swap will be held on Saturday, August 11 from  8 am-11 am at Rivercrest Park in Tampa.


The Be Floridian campaign supports local ordinances in Tampa, Manatee, Pinellas and Sarasota counties that prohibit use of nitrogen fertilizer in the summer to prevent polluted runoff from entering our waterways. Just as importantly, Be Floridian encourages homeowners to garden like True Floridians, so it's only natural that the plant swap highlight native or Florida-friendly plants.


Full disclosure: I coordinate this great campaign with its plastic pink yard flamingo mascot as part of my job with the Tampa Bay Estuary Program. Just call me "Chief Flamingo Wrangler."

Yes, it's August and yes, it's hot! That's why we're swappin' early and beating feet before the hottest part of the day.


Want to join us? Please click here to read the rules and register. You can find directions to Rivercrest Park here too. Don't delay -- we have a maximum of 45 participants to keep all of us crazed plantaholics from trampling each other in a mad rush to grab that coveted coontie or coreopsis.


I attended my first Plant Swap a year ago and loved it! Swaps are a great way to add new plants to your yard, to make new gardening friends, and to save money because the plants are all free!! That's right, I said FREE. The catch is that you need to bring plants to take plants.


Each participant will be given tickets based on the number of plants they bring, up to a maximum of 20. For example, if you bring five plants, you get five tickets to take five plants. 


Please also bring an extra plant for a cash-strapped gardening newbie who doesn't have the ability to purchase landscape plants. We don't want anyone to leave empty-handed!

This lovely lady needs a new home

I've been digging up plants in my yard for the last two weeks and stacking them in a side corner. I think I already have about 25 plants to contribute myself -- including two gorgeous beautyberry shrubs I had to remove because the yard was just a bit too crowded with three of these magnificent shade-loving natives. I hope to find them a very good home at the swap!


Seeds, cuttings (fresh, wrapped in moist paper towels or newspapers) and bulbs also are welcome. We'll even take gardening tools or books in exchange for plant tickets.


This is a great time to get new plants in the ground, because Mother Nature will do the work of watering them in for you. My easy-care yard is lovin' life right now, and so am I! Hope to see you at the Plant Swap on August 11.