I remember when I first started networking with Landscape Architects. I was hosting luncheons with a local Women in Architecture group, and we invited Landscape Architects, Interior Designers, Engineers, and other affiliated industry women to join us. As Architects, we were very interested in the concepts of energy efficiency, sustainability, and the looser term “Green” architecture.
The Landscape Architects laughed. WE are the original Green Architects, they said. And they were right!
Although my parents always had (and still have) a large garden around their house, I didn’t really get the urge to plant until I moved out on my own. I planted bulbs in the ground next to my patio in my ground-floor apartment in Maryland. I planted lots of flowers next to my patio in my rented townhouse here in Clearwater. I would shop the pretty annuals, but preferred the perennials, which could be planted once, and then bloom year after year. Pretty efficient!
When I bought my house, I had an empty palette – a grassy lawn, a couple of trees, and a few bushes. That was it. A gardener’s dream! I got right to work improving the soil, adding familiar perennials and annuals, shrubs and flowers, and watering everything to get it through the drier season. What I lost, I would buy again sometimes.
And then one day, I decided to read up on the native wildflowers of Florida. The beautiful colors that surprised me on walks in the woods. The flowering shrubs that looked at home despite August’s best attempts at humidity and high temperatures. And the more I discovered, the more hooked I became. I started with easy re-seeders like cheery Beach sunflowers (Helianthus debilis), and fell in love with the little fuzzy lollipops of Sunshine mimosa (Mimosa strigillosa). Zero watering and almost zero maintenance!
Today, I have a lovely garden, although I’m always changing something (I’m a gardener, not a Landscape Architect!). I let plants re-seed where they want, and yank them out of where I don’t want them. Although the front yard is a little more restrained. I have lots of butterflies all the time, and the plants have attracted birds, squirrels, and other wildlife. And I have kept some of the non-native but drought-tolerant flowering plants that I have come to love, too. My gardenia bushes are just gorgeous and smell so good (I have created a White Garden around them, a small nod to Sissinghurst)! But a gardener’s shopping list is never truly fulfilled. This year, I have been visiting some of the Native Plant nurseries beyond Pinellas County, too.
Part of having a garden is all the work and love you put into it. And part of it is the enjoyment of watching the bees visit in the morning while I read a book on the patio.
I don’t miss the change of leaves Up North. And I think Florida DOES have an Autumn season. Our season’s colors are purple and yellow. Happy gardening!
- Here’s a great resource for those of you interested in adding native plants to your garden: https://www.plantrealflorida.org/
Photos by Author. Beautyberry (Callicarpa americana), Goldenrod (Solidago), Sunshine Mimosa with bee (Mimosa strigillosa), Florida Paintbrush (Carphephorus corymbosus ), Blue Curls (Trichostema dichotomum), Stoke’s Aster (Stokesia laevis), Beach sunflower with cat (Helianthus debilis).
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