Looking for Space

My Florida Backyard took another step this week toward the goal of eliminating as much boring, fairly useless grass from our front lawn as possible. This gives us more room for interesting plants that can attract wildlife and, quite frankly, look much better than patchy grass.

To that end, we decided to expand the front garden from two arcs:

Into one big arc:

Now the tantalizing question remains... what to plant in all the new space? We already have a lot of fountain grass and muhly grass lining the walkways, with plumbago bushes on the right side and beach sunflower under the tree. We'd like to continue with more yellows, purples, and blues - we do have some Blazing Star (liatris) bulbs to scatter throughout the new and old beds, so their purple should mix nicely with the purples of the muhly grass in the fall.

Any suggestions? Bear in mind that we have some pretty firm rules about not using supplemental irrigation once a plant is established... it needs to survive on the rain Mother Nature provides (or doesn't). This area faces southwest and gets lots of sun in the hottest part of summer. We'd like some low plants along the edge in front, and higher plants or even a shrub in the middle. We prefer native plants, though we're flexible as long as they're Florida-Friendly, and we really don't like to have to do a lot of maintenance in the front yard. Now, with all these thoughts in mind, what should we put in our newly-expanded garden?

Accentuate the Positive

Once we had some ground rules laid, it was time to assess what we had already in the yard, and what we would need to do. Turned out, what we had was very little, and what we would need to do was a lot!

Here's what we had:

Front Yard: Mostly crabgrass. Walkway in good shape. "Gardens" filled with lava rocks and sad-looking potted plants. Healthy (if overgrown) holly bush and unidentified tree.

Backyard: Swing set inherited from previous owners and soon given away to next-door neighbors with kids. No landscaping to speak of.


Side yard: Overgrown weeds and not much else. (Note: The fence pictured belongs to the neighbor house.)
Yikes. Where to start? Well, we knew we wanted to eliminate as much grass as possible. Grass is the enemy of a Florida and Wildlife Friendly yard. Why? Well, grass is not really native to Florida. Some varieties, like Bahia and Bermuda, do reasonably well here, but don't really provide anything useful for wildlife. Plus, grass requires a lot of upkeep - mowing, watering, and so on. Grass just didn't fit with our guidelines.

We also wanted to add some type of pathway around the house from the front door to the back porch. Florida grass (except the St. Augustine on golf courses) is not nice to walk on in the best of circumstances. It's rough and scratchy, and usually contains unwelcome critters like fire ants. Adding a pathway would also add a little structure to the yard.

With this in mind, we began to plan. We took some measurements and sketched out the yard and house, and then began to draw in gardens and other features. I found the Florida Friendly Landscaping website to be immensely helpful with this - they have an interactive yard feature that gives you great ideas. We decided to cut out several arcs of gardens in the front yard and turn almost the entire backyard into garden, including a butterfly garden behind the porch.

We decided to use paver blocks set into sand for the walkway. This choice was economical and fairly earth-friendly. By setting the paver blocks into sand instead of solid concrete, we were allowing for rain water to get through to the ground below instead of draining away to storm sewers. Florida's aquifers need all the help they can get!

With our general plan in place, and nice spring weather upon us, it was time to get cracking!

Let's Start at the Very Beginning...

Once upon a time, a man and a woman moved from Ohio to Florida to escape the long dreary winters. Unlike many people who do this, this man and woman were in their late 20's, not their late 60's. After living in an apartment for a few years, they decided to buy a house.

When they began looking for a house, they had one major feature in mind: it had to be situated on a lake or pond. Although they would have loved to live on the beach, that's not practical or wise in hurricane country, so they contented themselves with being a dozen miles inland and living on freshwater. Soon, they found a house that seemed just perfect.

Well, OK, not perfect. It needed a new roof, the bathrooms were sadly outdated, the paint scheme was dreadful, the dishwasher was broken, the windows were missing screens and refused to stay propped open, it was directly in the airport flight path... the list goes on. Yet, for this young couple, the house had a redeeming quality that seemed to overshadow all others - a huge screened-in porch overlooking a lake:



And so they bought the house. And the adventure began...