From Sandy Soil A Sustainable Landscape Can Grow

Oh, the sand. There sure is a lot of that. And not necessarily where you want it Garden Landscaping.

When Valerie Daniels moved to Sarasota’s Indian Beach neighborhood three years ago, she was drawn by the same natural amenities that attracted countless others over the past 150 years. Then she tried to do some gardening and realized that the soil was as sandy as the near her hometown of Rehoboth, Mass.

“What do I do with this?” she thought as she dug into her yard. She’s since hired and fired three companies in her search for the answer, and now has turned to courses offered by the Extension Service.

One of them, “Nine Landscape Principles,” was held Monday at the Fruitville Library, in the middle of dry season. Of course, it rained that day, and several days after. But that didn’t keep and one male journalist from peppering Jane Smith and Watts with questions about mulch, proper watering, using as a , and dealing with the compacted soils around newer houses that are more like concrete than dirt.

Daniels was among that group. She attends such seminars in hopes of finding the ideal plants and methods for making a success of her Florida .

“It’s just a little bit of a challenge for me and something I have to learn to reckon with,” she said of her sandy . She has planted oleander with , and her new are doing well, as is the lantana. “And that’s as far as I’ve gotten. That’s why I’m here; I want to know what to do with the west side of the house.”

That’s where it gets so hot in the afternoon.

“The first year I lived here, I saw as an enigma,” said Daniels, “because I wondered how … you do it with all this heat. I didn’t do much gardening the first year. Then I heard ‘coreopsis,’ Garden Landscaping and I thought, ‘I had those up north.’ I tuned into that, and bought a couple of books on and came to a couple of these classes. The book they gave out today was a nifty one. That plant guide (”A Guide to Florida-Friendly ”) … I’m glad I came just for that.”

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Monday, May 26th, 2008

Garden Landscaping No Comments

Florida gardening Tropical with a temperate twist

Nothing is quite what it seems in Florida, a state
where %26#8216;zonal denial’ is the gardening mantra. Joanna Fortnam reports

One sunny day in March, almost six years ago, I landed in Orlando
on a plane packed with excited Britons headed for the theme parks
and beaches. I felt just a tad superior that I was there to
experience the “real” Florida, having been called to the
Sunshine State to work as an editor on a US gardening magazine.
Although I was only a novice gardener, how hard could it be to
dazzle the natives with my innate British flair?

superman: Raymond Jungles of Miami has made
an art form of tropical gardens; (left) cloned orchids such as
Phalaenopsis Ever Spring King ‘Lee’, are big business

I soon found that Florida, adaptable and obliging to a fault, is
also full of baffling horticultural loopholes. I had left behind a
national comfort zone, then presided over by Alan Titchmarsh, where
gardeners speak pretty much the same language, and landed in a
Babelian world of US Department of Agriculture climate zones,
hurricane warnings, and humidity levels. Even gardeners on opposite
sides of the state struggled to find common ground.

I had to check my stock of received wisdom constantly against a
never ending list of ifs and buts. Gardening books - forget it; all
written by Brits. Plant labels - useless; “full sun” does
not mean scorching Florida sun. “Plant in spring” means
wait until autumn or your will fry.

When I sought advice from out-of-state contacts, their ignorance
matched my own: “? They just change the busy
Lizzies from pink to white a couple of times a year,” guffawed
one New Yorker.

Even Americans dismiss Florida as an escapist bolthole full of
flamingos, alligator wrestling and theme parks. But in reality it is
a hub of serious horticulture: 20 miles to the north of Orlando is
Apopka, a township of foliage plant factories where just about every
bird’s-nest fern that ever graced a waiting room first saw
life. In Homestead, north of Miami, cloned orchids flood from petri
dishes in numbers that have put a phalaenopsis in every living room.
And there are the citrus groves that earned Florida its nickname of
the “Big Orange”.

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0

Thursday, January 3rd, 2008

Landscaping No Comments

Florida gardening Tropical with a temperate twist

Nothing is quite what it seems in Florida, a state
where %26#8216;zonal denial’ is the gardening mantra. Joanna Fortnam reports

One sunny day in March, almost six years ago, I landed in Orlando
on a plane packed with excited Britons headed for the theme parks
and beaches. I felt just a tad superior that I was there to
experience the “real” Florida, having been called to the
Sunshine State to work as an editor on a US gardening magazine.
Although I was only a novice gardener, how hard could it be to
dazzle the natives with my innate British flair?

superman: Raymond Jungles of Miami has made
an art form of tropical gardens; (left) cloned orchids such as
Phalaenopsis Ever Spring King ‘Lee’, are big business

I soon found that Florida, adaptable and obliging to a fault, is
also full of baffling horticultural loopholes. I had left behind a
national comfort zone, then presided over by Alan Titchmarsh, where
gardeners speak pretty much the same language, and landed in a
Babelian world of US Department of Agriculture climate zones,
hurricane warnings, and humidity levels. Even gardeners on opposite
sides of the state struggled to find common ground.

I had to check my stock of received wisdom constantly against a
never ending list of ifs and buts. Gardening books - forget it; all
written by Brits. Plant labels - useless; “full sun” does
not mean scorching Florida sun. “Plant in spring” means
wait until autumn or your will fry.

When I sought advice from out-of-state contacts, their ignorance
matched my own: “? They just change the busy
Lizzies from pink to white a couple of times a year,” guffawed
one New Yorker.

Even Americans dismiss Florida as an escapist bolthole full of
flamingos, alligator wrestling and theme parks. But in reality it is
a hub of serious horticulture: 20 miles to the north of Orlando is
Apopka, a township of foliage plant factories where just about every
bird’s-nest fern that ever graced a waiting room first saw
life. In Homestead, north of Miami, cloned orchids flood from petri
dishes in numbers that have put a phalaenopsis in every living room.
And there are the citrus groves that earned Florida its nickname of
the “Big Orange”.

Tags: , ,
0

Saturday, December 29th, 2007

Landscaping No Comments


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