Gold Coast Gardener

July 9, 2006

By Gene Joyner, Extension Agent
Palm Beach County Cooperative Extension Service

Many communities now are adding more and more native plants to their landscaping since these seemed to have survived recent storms much better than many introduced exotics. This doesn’t mean you have to plant exclusively with natives, but in any landscape there’s room for a mixture of some of your favorite flowers, vegetables, or fruits along with some of our native plants that are proven good landscape specimens.

Whether you want trees, shrubs, or low growing plants, you can find it in the way of native plants and if you want to see how well they look in the landscape, visit any large city or county park or natural area where parts of Florida have been preserved and you can see how well these plants do with basically no intervention from man in the way of watering, fertilizing, or pruning.

This doesn’t mean that if you plant those you don’t have to give them any water or fertilizer or pruning because in many landscapes you will have them intermixed with already existing non-native plants which require watering and fertilizing and so the plants will get that whether they need it or not.

Some pruning and shaping of native plants is done occasionally depending on the location in the landscape and how close they are to other specimen plants. If you started out though with a large natural look to your landscape native plants certainly over the long term require less input of money for maintenance and fertilizer.

Large native trees such as oaks, mahoganies, pigeon plum, seagrape, satin leaf and others have been used for many years and still are very popular as additions to any type of landscaping. Native shrubs such as firebush, porter weed, beauty berry and lantana can provide an attraction for butterflies as well as provide seeds or fruits for birds.

If you’re fortunate enough to live along a canal or small lake there are many native plants that can be used in those situations and good examples would be cypress, red maple, wax myrtle, coco plum, pond apple and smaller plants at the waters edge such as pickerel weed, native iris and canna.

If you’d like to talk to a group of people who are really into natives, attend one of the monthly meetings of the Palm Beach Chapter of the Florida Native Plant Society. This group meets the third Tuesday evening of each month at 7:30 p.m. at the Mounts Building Auditorium, 531 North Military Trail in West Palm Beach, half way between Southern and Belvedere.

The club has interesting speakers each month and also frequently has field trips on weekends to natural areas and other parts of the state where you can see natural ecosystems the way they should be.

The Palm Beach County Extension Service has a number of free publications on plants including one on native plants which can be picked up at their offices during business hours. If you have a question about the types of native plants best suited for your area, you can call the Palm Beach County Extension office for free advice. Dial 233-1750 in the north and central county areas or 276-1260 in the south county area.