I just wrapped a design and install that I want to share with you! It was so much fun to assist in bringing this Central Florida homeowners ideas to fruition. More native plants, more edibles and a little less lawn.
Here are before and after photos:
Photo above: Before. I was so inspired by the existing orchard row created by the homeowner, in an otherwise blank slate. What a lovely place to work!
Photo above: After. A new Florida native plant garden with lots of layers. New fruit trees selected by the homeowner, under planted with edibles and ground covers.
The homeowner reached out to me early spring, with the goal of landscaping her side yard to create a native plant garden to support wildlife as well as to provide something beautiful for her neighbors to enjoy. As we got into the process, we also developed a plan to enhance her existing row of fruit trees, some of which didn’t make it through the series of freezes we had this year.
In a concept design for the culinary side, I switched up the concrete bricks to a clean modern edging to simplify the look and also make it easier to mow and edge around.
Photo above: New edging contains the culinary garden.
We’re working with several microclimates, from bright shade to partial sun with a sunny front corner and the culinary garden receiving the most sun throughout the day. The soil is well draining sandy soil with varying levels of moisture depending on shade and a seasonally moister area where a downspout empties. The perfect spot for a mini rain garden!
We’re incorporating an existing Aloysia virgata (Sweet Almond), a Florida friendly shub/small tree on the house side.
On the culinary side, an existing cold hardy Prunica granatum (Pomegranate) anchors the orchard row, with fruit trees curated by the homeowner. Pomegranates are a deciduous shrub to small tree that are self pollinating and can produce fruit with a single tree. This one has been beautifully pruned and shaped by the homeowner. It is early May now and fruits are forming but it will be a little while yet until they are in season.
Photo above: Punica granatum (Pomegranate)
Photo above: Punica granatum (Pomegranate) flower.
Wildish formality. Under the fruit trees we added more edibles to the homeowners smart idea of using strawberries (existing) as a ground cover. The new herbal culinary additions of chives, thyme, garden sage, Thai basil and dill (a host plant for the black swallowtail butterfly) are planted in the center. Culinary herbs can be switched out depending on the season.
Photo above: Ever-bearing strawberries produce fruit over a long period and also make a great ground cover. New plants develop at the end of the runners (stolons).
The outside border of the culinary garden is lined with Florida native flowering ground covers which will be present year after year and provide a good frame for the seasonal culinary selections in the center as well as extra resources for pollinators.
Photo above: Sisyrinchium angustifolium (Blue eyed grass) is a Florida native, low growing, grass like plant in the Iris family that makes a great ground cover and is utilized here to frame the culinary herbs.
For the native plant border, I started by developing a suggested plant list to present to the homeowner so we could go over it plant by plant. I want my clients to not only love what is going in, but to be familiar with the plants and to get to know them. After she was happy with the plant list, I created a planting plan to guide my installation.
The native plant garden, house side, features more than 15 species, offering a variety of blooms all year long and equally important, many of the plants here are larval food sources. The caterpillars these plants feed are an important food source for birds looking to feed their young and get a meal themselves. Ground hugging flowering natives like Packera aurea (Golden ragwort) and Dyschoriste humistrata (Lakeside twinflower) will act like a green mulch, covering the soil and reducing the need for purchasing and reapplying mulch in the future.
Photo above: A variety of species of native plants with bloom times that will span the seasons and provide larval food sources for insects.
Photo above: Dyschoriste humistrata (Lakeside twinflower) makes a great ground cover in areas that do not dry out for extended periods of time. It is also the larval host plant for the Buckeye butterfly.
A downspout collecting rainwater from the roof, empties into a micro rain garden where moisture loving native plants will soak up the extra water. The small river rocks and the moisture create their own little micro habit that supports wildlife; frogs and toads, insects looking for a drink.
Photo above: Asclepias perennis (White swamp milkweed, host for the Monarch butterfly) can grow in shadier conditions than other native milkweed species.
And finally, the sunny corner near the front of the home features evergreen Senna mexicana var. chapmanii (Chapman’s senna) the host plant for the yellow sulphur butterflies. Around the base of the Senna is long flowering Glandularia tampensis (Tampa verbena), a butterfly favorite, greeting people coming home and also enticing pollinators to the garden around the corner.
Sincere thanks to my client who was a collab on this project! She brought an amazing opportunity and put in some sweat equity herself, selecting and planting fruit trees, removing sod by hand and installing edging. Looking forward to seeing this one fill in! - Andrea