My Big, Bad Gardening Boo-Boo

Just when I think I'm actually getting the hang of this Bay-Friendly Landscaping, reality slaps me right up side the head!

And I have no one to blame but myself. 

Two years ago, I planted a pretty low-growing groundcover native to the Pacific Islands called  dwarf chenille plant, (Acalypha pendula), in my mulched beds to take up space.

It took up space alright. This innocuous looking plant, with its pretty red fuzzy blooms that resemble caterpillars, has become what my husband calls my "biggest gardening mistake ever."   

As Scooby Doo would say,  "Ruh Roh."


Chenille plant loved my yard, too much. It spread, and spread, and spread. It also started to climb.

It climbed up the shrubs.

 

It climbed up the trees.

It climbed up containers.

It spilled out over the edging of my landscape beds.

It grew on top of landscape fabric intended to suppress weeds. 

It grew in my shell pathways.

By now, you get the picture.

Before I bought this plant, I did what I thought was the responsible thing, and researched it. It was not listed as invasive in any of the sources I found, including the University of Florida EDIS database that I consider the most accurate. One Extension publication even recommended it as a groundcover in areas without foot traffic, which is exactly where I put it.

To be fair, the EDIS Fact Sheet says it is "not known to be invasive."
I suspect that horticulturists just don't have enough evidence about this plant's greedy nature yet, because it is not that commonly used. It's usually sold in hanging baskets, which is exactly where it should stay, based on my experience.

You have been warned.

About a month ago, we began removing it. I spent two days, about 4 hours each day, pulling it up. My husband joined me for one of the days.

A week later, it was back, popping up everywhere. We spent another few hours ripping it out.

Same thing last weekend. Rick and I each spent two hours on chenille destruction duty. We have traded in what was a very low-maintenance landscape for what seems like endless chenille patrol.  

      Four loads of chenille plant in three weeks!        

Unlike plants that grow individually from seeds, chenille plant grows by underground rhizomes that seem to have no beginning and no end. This makes it very difficult to control. There is just no way to successfully hand-pull all the rhizomes. 

After last weekend's waste of time when we should have been fishing, cycling or just sitting on the deck with a little umbrella drink, I added a new layer of pine bark mulch to my landscape beds and laid pine straw on top of that. It may slow the invading chenille, but I don't think it will stop it.

As much as I hate to say this, I think we are headed toward chemical warfare. With a plant that is as aggressive as this, a good herbicide containing glyphosate may be our only solution.  I have not used a chemical in my yard in years. But I need to defeat the chenille plant before it defeats us.

This hard lesson has reminded me of how vulnerable Florida's hospitable climate is to invasive plants and animals. It also reinforces that plants behave differently in different places and conditions. What is invasive in one yard may be well-behaved in another -- though I have since read complaints from other gardeners about the invasive nature of dwarf chenille.

But, as someone who has successfully eradicated a large plague of air potatoes in my yard, and who manages to keep in check the annoying Mexican petunias that continue to pop up 15 years after I first removed them, I know an invasive when I see one.

Stay tuned. This battle is just beginning. 

I've Got The Blues

Yes, indeed, I have the blues, but I'm not bawling.

This is the kind of blues that gives me a big grin.

My Blue-eyed Grass is in bloom! Those dainty little blossoms can cheer me up like no other plant in my yard.

Formally known as Sisyrinchium angustifolium,. this oh-so-pretty native plant  only blooms for a few weeks each Spring. But what an impact it makes!

Blue-eyed Grass is not a grass, but a member of the iris family. A perennial, it grows in a clump and stays short, about 1-2 feet high and equally wide. Mine is a gift from a friend, and it has grown and spread considerably in the last year.

Blue-eyed grass is a wonderful border or filler plant. The foliage looks nice even when it's not blooming. Frankly, I sort of forgot it was there until it bloomed last week. I didn't even notice that it was getting ready to bloom!

Now, it's impossible to ignore. I could look at it for hours, I think, especially in the early evening as I sit on my deck with a glass of wine. It's just plain adorable.

The 6-petal blooms stand tall and proud on individual stalks, with yellow centers. The petals vary in color. Mine are a deep blue, almost purple shade. 

Its native habitat is open woods, moist pinelands, meadows, marshes, the edges of swamps and along roadsides. 

But it's the perfect urban garden resident, happy as can be with very little care once established and tolerant of both full sun and light shade.

If you want to dig the blues in your garden, contact a native plant nursery. Florida Native Plants Nursery in northeast Sarasota County carries it, and owner Laurel Schiller is a fount of native plant knowledge. If you know of other sources for this plant, please post them in the comments section.

I did actually see blue-eyed grass very recently at a Home Depot as well -- one of the Florida Friendly Plants grown by Riverview Flower Farms. 

Or, make friends with someone who has this adorable flower in their garden and is willing to share the easily divided clumps with you. You won't be blue with this happy face to welcome Spring!

 

 

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