Roll Out the Barrel

Now that we've finally tamed the backyard again, we decided it needed a little color. Since we just finished laying new landscape paper to block the weeds, we didn't want to cut through it and give the suckers a chance to grow again. Instead, we added some half-barrel planters to the yard.

The original plan was to buy wooden whiskey barrels, but I went to the store by myself to get them, and wow - those things are heavy! So, I found these lightweight resin ones instead. They may not last more than few years, but they were much easier to move. I drilled a few holes in the bottom for better drainage first, and then added some organic potting soil.

Then came the fun part - adding the plants! I had picked up a bunch of calibrachoa and petunias on the Lowe's clearance racks a few weeks ago and hand't yet decided what to do with them. I wound up mixing them with some Agastache rupestris, sometimes called Rose Mint Hyssop, making for containers full of butterfly attractants.

Agastache rupestris

Calibrachoa 'Coralberry Punch'

Petunia and Calibrachoa 'Coralberry Punch'

Plants in containers may require a little extra water, but fortunately we had some nice rains last weekend to fill up the rain barrel. This color and plant combination should be irresistible to butterflies now that our Florida weather has finally returned (what's up with 40-degree nights at the end of March, anyway?). These barrels give My Florida Backyard just the kick of color it needs to welcome spring!

The Daily Mail

Well, the new year is less than two months old, and we're pleased to announce we've already completed one of our New Year's Resolutions. We finally took some time to add some plants around the mailbox, adding a little shot of color to the area.

We had a few challenges to meet, the main one being that the people who owned the house before us had placed lava rock around the mailbox area without putting down landscape fabric underneath. In the intervening years, the lava rock settled down into the soil, making it very difficult to plant in this area without digging up all the rock first... something we didn't really want to have to do. So instead, we used some edging and filled it in with fill dirt and potting soil. Then we added our plants, society garlic and bulbine.

Society Garlic (Tulbaghia violacea) is native to rocky grasslands in South Africa, and thrives in Florida's climate without being invasive. It grows and spreads by rhizome, and after a year or two you can divide and spread it to other areas if you like. It tolerates dry conditions but also withstands our humid summers, as well as withstanding temps as low as 20 degrees.

Society Garlic has a flush of blooms in mid-winter (right around this time) and then off and on throughout the spring and summer. It rests in the winter. The foliage has a strong garlic scent, but the purple flowers themselves are surprisingly sweet-smelling. The bulbs and leaves can be used just like garlic.

Society Garlic mixes well with - and is often planted alongside - Bulbine (Bulbine frutescens), another plant native to South Africa. They thrive in the same conditions and have similar foliage, so they look nice planted together.

Neither of these plants have particularly showy flowers, but their foliage remains green all year round and they'll do well in the dry sunny area by the mailbox. Later this year, we plan to add a flowering vine like thumbergia to climb up the mailbox pole and add some more color. This landscaping may not be exciting or flashy, but it's easy to care for and Florida-Friendly - and we've checked one of our resolutions off the list!

Heaven Scent

Ask people to name the flowers of spring, and you'll inevitably hear daffodils, tulips, lilacs, and so on. Florida's spring brings different blooms, and in My Florida Backyard, the bloom that means spring is Confederate Jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminoides). We have a whole wall of it growing along the north side of the porch, and for the few weeks it's in flower, the scent dominates the neighborhood.

We planted our Confederate Jasmine three years ago when we added the latticework to the porch. We needed a drought-tolerant vine that would grow in mostly shade, as this side of the house faces north. We also preferred a vine that would be evergreen, so it would look good in the cooler months of winter as well. Confederate Jasmine fit the bill perfectly.

Confederate Jasmine is not a true jasmine, and despite the name, is not native to the U.S. - it's actually from Southeast Asia. It gets the name "Confederate" from the fact that it grows best in the part of the country that was once the Confederacy. In other parts of the world, it's more commonly known as Star Jasmine.

Whatever the name, the scent is just as sweet, and we love having this bloom signal the true start of spring in My Florida Backyard!

Blast From the Past

My Florida Backyard will be on its own for the next few days while its owners head north to visit family. In the meantime, you might enjoy this article I co-wrote with Kristen Gilpin, who runs the BioWorks Butterfly Garden at MOSI. It's an interesting look at how different gardening in Florida was 50 years ago, when DDT was still A-OK and the term "exotic invasives" just didn't exist...

Where it All Went Terribly Wrong: Post-WWII Landscaping in Florida

by Kristen Gilpin and Jill M. Staake

Most Florida gardeners today are familiar with the concept of “Florida-Friendly Gardening”. It involves simple steps like eliminating water-hungry turfgrass, minimizing use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides to protect our waterways, focusing on native plants, and avoiding exotic invasives. But the ideas behind Florida-Friendly Gardening didn’t evolve overnight - instead, like many things, they were developed in response to serious mistakes Florida residents made in the past. A Florida gardening book from 1962 shows the astonishing turnaround Florida gardeners have made in the last 50 years.

The Way We Were: In the last one hundred years, Florida’s population has boomed to over 18 million residents. But in 1900, Florida had a population of 528,542 people and was a largely agrarian state. That all changed with the land boom of the early 1920’s and near doubling of the state population just after World War II. Low property costs, a gorgeous climate, and an inexpensive cost of living saw rapid Florida development. Urban areas sprouted vast tracts of suburban housing developments and millions of new residents streamed into Florida. These new homeowners were from all parts of the nation and looking for some ways to make their new properties look lush and tropical.

Gardening in Florida is like gardening no where else in the country. High temperatures, seasonal rains, and extended dry seasons test even the most experienced of gardeners. New Florida residents were looking for gardening tips and wanted fast-growing plants that would make their property look more established. Without  the Internet or TV gardening programs to consult, many residents of Pinellas and Hillsborough county tuned their radio dials to listen to Uncle Pasco Roberts’ Radio Garden Club.

“The Radio Garden Club is a 15-minute program over Radio Station WSUN (St. Petersburg, Fla.) five days a week (Monday through Friday) at 1:45 to 2pm. It is devoted to What Grows in Florida... How to Grow It... and Where to Get It.” (Florida State Horticultural Society, 1950)

Uncle Pasco’s show was so popular it led to the publication of The Book of Florida Gardening in 1962. It featured a month-by-month gardening guide and even a section on the newest gardening craze, hydroponics. It’s clear that Uncle Pasco wanted to provide his readers with garden tips that would help them combine traditional northern gardening with the exotic feel of the tropics. The first chapters of the book focus on establishing a turfgrass lawn (“No matter whether you have a modest or palatial home, estate of building, it usually takes a beautiful lawn to give it the proper setting,” he notes on page 15), along with planting roses, azaleas, and lilies - plants Northerners would be familiar with, even if they were a little challenging to grow in Florida’s climate. He also provided lengthy chapters on hibiscus, camellias, and gardenias, appealing to the desire to create a tropical oasis. Judging by the stock most nurseries carry, it’s fair to say these same desires exist among gardeners today. Although Uncle Pasco rarely recommended a native plant to these new Florida gardeners, many of his recommendations are still popular and acceptable in modern Florida gardens.

So What’s the Problem?  It’s when Uncle Pasco begins to focus on trees that we begin to see how these new residents quickly created an ecological nightmare for Florida’s native plants. Of the 24 trees he recommends in his chapter “Fast Growing Trees”, 18 (75%!) of them can now be found on the FLEPPC Category I and II invasive species list, which includes plants that are or may become “invasive exotics that are altering native plant communities by displacing native species, changing community structures or ecological functions, or hybridizing with natives.”

Let’s take a look at some of the recommendations from Uncle Pasco:

• Golden Rain Tree: (Koelreuteria elegans) native to eastern Asia, in China and Korea is a fast growing and colorful tree that does incredibly well in Florida. It is now listed as a category 2 invasive species in Florida.
• Melaleuca : (Melaleuca quinquenervia) is an aggressively spreading member of the myrtle family with blooms that attract butterflies and bees. Planted in numbers to help drain swampy portions of the Everglades, these trees quickly escaped plantings. Mellaleuca is highly flammable, which helped to worsen wildfires in the area and increase their intensity. It is now listed as a category 1 invasive in Florida.
• Tree of Gold (Tabebuia argentea) is native to South America where it was an important nesting tree for the highly endangered Spix’s Macaw (Cyanopsitta spixii). Each year it blooms with brilliant yellow trumpet shaped flowers.
• Golden Shower Tree (Cassia fistula) is native to southern Asia and blooms with lovely yellow flowers each spring. It develops large seed pods and has seeds that are toxic.
• Earleaf Acacia: (Acacia auriculiformis) It is native to Australia, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea. It is now listed as a category 1 invasive in Florida.
• Australian Pine is native to Australia. Uncle Pasco Roberts notes that the shallow root system has been recently identified as a problem with the note “during the worst of hurricanes in the Everglades, they blew across the roadways and became a hazard.”. He further notes that the planting of this tree has become prohibited but continues to recommend it as windbreak protection perfect for wide open spaces and sandy beaches! It is now listed as a category 1 invasive and is prohibited from further planting in Florida.
• Chinese Tallow (Sapium sebiferum) is native to Eastern Asia and is now listed as a noxious weed on the Florida Invasive Species List. This tree had rapid growth and quickly outperforms native tree species. It is now listed as a category 1 invasive species in Florida.
• Mother’s Tongue Tree (Albizzia lebbek) is native to tropical southern Asia and drops huge seed pods over the course of two months in the spring. It is now listed as a category 1 invasive in Florida.
• Monkey Pod Tree (Pithecolobium) native to Mexico, Central America, and northern South America. Uncle Pasco Roberts writes: “The tree is good for shade, ornament and for food for monkeys”. Well, at least our Mystery Monkey of Tampa Bay can find some good forage out there!

Perhaps the most interesting recommendation is the Java Plum (Syzgium cumini), which is native to Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Indonesia. Uncle Pasco particularly praises this tree for for its fruit, and includes a recipe from his wife for Java Plum jelly. He proudly credits himself with the spread of this Category I invasive in the Tampa Bay area, noting on page 61:

The author came across several [Java Plum] trees in Laurel, Fla. about 1949 and from seeds and small trees obtained... I have helped popularize this tree in Pinellas and Hillsborough Counties to the extent that there are many hundreds now growing and some have reached 60 to 70 feet in height. The first seeds I planted produced a growth of 20 feet within three years...

 Uncle Pasco does not recommend a single native tree from Florida or even from the Southeast United States. This sort of gardening advice is precisely what landed Florida in the spot it is in today. Costly remediation efforts are being conducted every year to remove trees like these that have escaped cultivation and are outperforming our native trees. Non-native species are often unaffected by local diseases and pest populations and can spread unchecked by the normal balances of nature. To learn more about the problems caused by invasive plants in Florida, visit the Florida Exotic Pest Plant Council website.

A 1962 view of “pesky worms”: Uncle Pasco’s 50-year-old advice contains other recommendations that modern gardeners would do well to ignore. Among these are his recommendations on fertilizer (everything needs it!) and pesticides.

Butterfly gardening has really only been popularized in recent years, so reading 50-year-old commentary on caterpillar destruction can be a touch unsettling.The beautiful Cloudless Sulhpur and Orange Barred Sulhpur butterfies host on many species of cassia, including Christmas Cassia (Cassia bicapsularis). Butterfly gardeners today welcome these creatures, but Uncle Pasco disagreed. In the planting guide for April on page 89, he says, “This is the month that most of the insects, pests, etc begin to show up in numbers... For instance those pesky worms appear on... cassia (Cassia bicapsularis)... and look like part of the foliage or flowers. Spray with arsenate of lead.”

Uncle Pasco seems to dislike caterpillars on general principal. The quick and darting Canna Skipper butterfly hosts in the leaves of native and ornamental cannas where it rolls the leaf around itself for protection from predators.  In the February planting guide (p. 86), he tells us, “One of the old time garden favorites that is staging a comeback is the canna... they are very easy to grow but are bothered however with leaf-rollers that cut good sized holes in the leaves. This may be controlled with a Chlordane dust.”

Not surprisingly, every pesticide Uncle Pasco recommends is now banned or not used in the United States. Chlordane was a carcinogenic insecticide that has not been sold in the United States since 1983; arsenate of lead was banned in 1988. He also recommends Nemagon (banned in 1975), Toxaphene (banned in 1986), and explains the proper application of DDT for flea control.

Lessons Learned: It’s important to remember that we can’t blame Uncle Pasco Roberts for his advice. A number of the species he suggests were also found listed in an article by the Florida State Horticultural Society from 1951 entitled Ornamental Trees, Shrubs, and Vines for South Florida Homes by Frank J Rimoldi. Clearly, this was the sort of information that was available to new Florida residents in the 1950’s and 1960’s, and they didn’t know then what we know now. The gardeners of 50 years ago had no idea how out of control their plantings could become. No one meant to destroy native habitats, or apply pesticides that would cause cancer, but lack of knowledge caused widespread and far-reaching damage.

What should we as modern gardeners learn from Uncle Pasco? Perhaps the most important thing to understand is that we all must become more considerate and thoughtful gardeners. We should learn more about the plants we choose to put in our yards, and think about what will happen when we’re no longer there to take care of them. Mexican Petunia is tempting at the nursery with its fast-growth habit and numerous pretty purple flowers, but this Category I invasive is displacing native wild petunia (Ruellia humilis) used by Buckeye caterpillars as a host plant, and it’s nearly impossible to remove once established in a yard due to its deep root system and aggressive seed distribution. Florida-Friendly Gardeners are learning to consider native plants when possible and carefully investigate non-native species before introducing them into the ecosystem.

It’s really about a return to common sense. If we can avoid chemicals in the garden, we should, whether the EPA tells us they’re safe or not. Today’s “safe pesticide” is tomorrow’s DDT. When chemicals like pesticides and fertilizers are necessary, we can use them sparingly, rather than applying them widely and regularly regardless of need. Rather than looking for fast results, which Uncle Pasco and the new Florida residents of 50 years ago desired, we can plan for the future and work toward a yard worth having and enjoying - safely.

Uncle Pasco teaches us to learn from the past. As Dr. Dale E. Turner said, “Some of the best lessons we ever learn are learned from past mistakes. The error of the past is the wisdom and success of the future.” We don’t need to cast blame on Uncle Pasco and his contemporaries, but we can certainly see where they went wrong and try to avoid similar mistakes in the future.

Beautiful Ohio

My Florida Backyard has been on its own for the last week, as its owners have been up north for a family wedding. As you might expect from a Florida garden in the summer, we returned to a serious jungle situation, especially since we received about 8 inches of rain in the 10 days before we left. Weeds are rampant, grass is knee-high, and the work ahead of us feels a little daunting.

On the plus side, we managed to squeeze in a little time in Ohio to visit the Secrest Arboretum in Wooster, a part of The Ohio State University's OARDC. Mid-July is probably the best time of the year in an Ohio garden, and we were able to enjoy some of the best flowers the state has to offer. Until My Florida Backyard is back in shape, we thought you might enjoy seeing what's in bloom up north right now.

Purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea):

The arboretum also had the newer orange cultivar of coneflower, which is amazing:

Shasta daisies (Chrysanthemum maximum):

Hummingbird Clearwing Moth (Hemaris thysbe) enjoying Bee Balm (Monarda):

The variety of day lilies and Asiatic lilies is astonishing:

Rose of Sharon (Hibiscus syriacus) is part of the hibiscus family, so we felt almost at home:

Columbine (Aquilegia hybrida), which unfortunately doesn't grow well in Florida:

A massed planting of Verbena bonarensis:

The arboretum also includes woodland trails and an outdoor amphitheater:

No butterfly lover would be happy without a new sighting on a trip. We saw our first Question Mark (Polygonia interrogationis), named for the small white marking on the lower hindwing.

Ohio is truly beautiful in the summer, and we're glad we had a chance to enjoy it. Now we're back home, ready to tackle the jungle that used to be our yard. Florida is beautiful in summer too, once you get all the weeds out of the way!

Lo, How a Rose is Growing

Back in March, My Florida Backyard planted its first rose, a pink double Knock Out. We'd been hesitant to plant roses, especially in Florida, because they generally require a great deal of care, and one of our basic rules is to avoid plants that might require excessive pesticides, fungicides, or fertilizer. We were assured, though, that Knockout roses are easy to grow, and it turns out that was certainly true.

Here's the rose when planted in early March:

And here it is now:

By comparing it to the bricks on the wall behind it, you can easily see how much it's grown. By our measurements, it's now about 2.5 feet tall; it was about a foot tall when we planted it. And the growing season is just getting started! Other than some rose fertilizer spikes and the occasional dead-heading, we've done nothing to it, and it looks great. We can certainly add Knock Out roses to our list of Florida-Friendly plants!

The bush to the right of the rose is a Silver Buttonwood (Conocarpus erectus), a really wonderful Florida native with beautiful silver foliage. Our two buttonwoods are planted on the west side of the house where they get a minimum of 6-8 hours of direct sunlight daily. This native is salt-tolerant, so you often see it along beaches and in coastline landscaping.

Buttonwood, unfortunately, doesn't like frost. It's generally considered hardy to Zone 9b. Being close to the house, ours have never shown any damage before, but we all know this past winter was very harsh. One of our buttonwoods took very serious damage and is only just now recovering. Several branches had to be cut off to the ground, but new growth is beginning to show and we expect the bush to rebound. The other took damage to the leaves, but the wood itself seemed to be spared. It has now put out new and beautiful foliage and is doing well.

So, like most everything in a Florida summer, our rose and buttonwoods are growing like crazy. We love to watch life thrive in the summertime in My Florida Backyard!

Suburban Beauty

The blooms of May continue, as the American Beautyberry (Callicarpa americana) bushes on the north side of the house begin to flower.

I wrote about our beautyberry bushes last fall, when I discussed the various shrubs that grow on the north side of our house. It's a good time to point out that the beautyberry bushes are one of the few plants in My Florida Backyard that seemed to love the cold winter this year. They are much fuller and bushier, especially after a hard pruning in late February. Beautyberry bushes can get rather leggy and scraggly looking if you aren't pretty stringent with a pruning in late winter, but ours are doing well and have almost doubled in size and fullness since last fall.


Beautyberry flowers and the subsequent berries grow at the junction where leaves meet stem. The blooms are not particularly fragrant or showy, and don't seem to be be a big nectar draw like some others, but they're very pretty up close.

This native shrub is a real trooper and one of our personal favorites. It's a shame these aren't more widely available outside native plant nurseries; it's extremely difficult to kill and grows in a wide variety of conditions. If you're looking for a low-maintenance shrub with a natural feel, you can't miss with American Beautyberry.

When the Bloom is on the Sage

The calendar says May, but the hot and humid temperatures say that summer has arrived in Florida. It seems just yesterday we were shivering around the space heaters as we endured the unusually cold winter, but that's definitely behind us now. Due to the surprisingly high amount of rain we got in April, the plants are thriving, including the pink, red, and blue sage we have in the butterfly garden.

Sage is also commonly known by its scientific genus, salvia, and there are many types and colors available. We particularly love tropical or scarlet sage (Salvia coccinea), as it is native to Florida and incredibly easy to grow. Tropical sage tolerates light frost and reseeds itself readily, popping up in random places that you don't remember putting it. Butterflies and hummingbirds love its year-round blooms, and gardeners love the fact that it needs almost no attention to thrive once established.

Despite the many great features, you'll generally have to look to native plant nurseries to find this gem - the red salvia offered at most big box stores is actually Salvia splendens. Salvia splendens is a very nice bedding plant, and will bloom happily until a frost, but it does not draw butterflies like the native tropical sage. We learned this last year when we planted a whole row of it, thinking the red flowers would be a magnet for butterflies. I guarantee you, it was not.

However, you may be able to find Salvia guarantica at big box stores, and it's definitely worth planting in a butterfly garden. I purchased several pots at Lowe's the other day of a cultivar called "Black and Blue Salvia". Though this sage is not native, it does well in Florida gardens and draws butterflies like crazy. It is frost-tender, so will die back in the winter, but easily grows back from the ground. It also reseeds readily, so this is another plant you can buy just one or two of and allow to spread throughout an area.

Another blue sage you may come across is Salvia farinacea. It's native to Mexico and Texas, and grows well in Florida. I recently started some of this from seed, a cultivar called Blue Bedding from Burpee. Starting sage from seed is very economical - and easy! Even those of us who don't have much luck starting plants from seed can buy a packet of sage seeds and do pretty well with it.


One other sage you may have noticed lately without even knowing its name is Lyreleaf Sage (salvia lyrata). This wonderful native wildflower is out in droves right now on the side of the road and in ditches. If you see a tall field of purple when you fly past at 60 miles an hour, there's a good chance you're looking at Lyreleaf. If you're lucky enough to have some growing near you, you can gather seed and sow it in your own garden (don't try this on private property, though!) - like all sages, it grows easily from seed.

There are many more kinds of sage out there; many of them are wonderful in a butterfly garden, and nearly all work well in Florida gardens. Do remember to avoid Salvia splendens if you're looking to attract butterflies - it won't do you much good. The other varieties mentioned above are essential to a Florida butterfly garden, and we love having them in My Florida Backyard!

Don't Fence Me In

My Florida Backyard occasionally experiences pest problems - specifically pests with two legs and no concept of property line boundaries. I'm speaking of course of some of the neighborhood children, who sometimes like to use the gardens in our yard as their own personal short cuts. While we're definitely not the old, cranky "keep off my lawn" kind of people (we really don't care if kids run on the little bit of grass left in the front yard), we definitely don't like it when careless kids trample our precious plants.

So, we've decided to try a bit of a physical barrier in the part of the yard that receives the most unwelcome traffic. We wanted a fairly low-cost solution, and we didn't want something that would block our own view of the lake, so we went with this resin "snap-together" fencing from Home Depot. It's just  high enough that you can't step over it easily, but unobtrusive enough that we don't notice it much.

It also has the advantage of serving as support for one of our new additions, purchased at the USF Spring Plant Sale this past weekend.

This new resident is a Dutchman's Pipevine, specifically Aristolochia trilobata. We've been wanting some pipevine in My Florida Backyard for quite some time now, as they serve as a host plant for both Pipevine Swallowtails and Polydamas Swallowtails. With any luck, we'll have some caterpillars on this vine this summer.

A. trilobata is a neat vine, with its shiny tri-lobed leaves and crazy interesting flowers (see below) that explain the "pipe" part of the name. It will die back to the ground in a freeze, but recovers well once the weather warms up. We were pleased to find such a healthy, full plant for sale, because it won't take a few caterpillars long to chomp the leaves up pretty well.

We've only had the new fence up a few days, so it's hard to say if this will completely stop the unwanted kid traffic. But if nothing else, it provides a great low trellis for a vine that should add a lot of wildlife value to My Florida Backyard, and that's something we can feel good about.

Daisy Bell

March went out like a lamb today, providing a great morning for adding plants to the outside edge of our newly-expanded front garden. It's hard to see the new additions in this photo, so see below for close-ups and details.

These cheerful little guys are Dahlberg Daisies (Thymophylla tenuiloba). We found these at our local Lowe's and decided to give them a try, since they love full sun and dry conditions. They are actually a native of South Texas, and grow to about 12 by 12 inches. They may not flower quite as well during the wet heat of our summer, but we're hopeful the well-drained sandy soil in the front yard will provide them with the conditions they need to flourish. The feathery foliage and happy yellow flowers make a nice contrast to plants we alternated them with...

... Purple Queen (Tradescantia pallida), also sometimes called Purple Heart. This native of Mexico caught my eye in the MOSI BioWorks gardens when it began to recover immediately after the hard freeze in January. It tolerates wet or dry conditions and loves full sun, making it a plant that should last for years in the garden.

Our little plants are very small right now, but will grow and spread into a low groundcover around the front edge of the garden. The sunny daisies make a nice contrast to the deep color of the purple queen, and we can't wait to see what they'll both look like after a few months of lots of sunshine!

P.S. Check out the weather forecast for the next week - it's beginning to look a lot like Florida!