Wildlife Value of our Plants
"How much more delightful is the task of making improvements on the earth, than all the vainglory in destroying it." attributed to George Washington
a) Unitarian Earth Day
b) It's not a dinner party y'all
c) planting for looks, not wildlife
d) the single seed
e) Unitarian Universalist Plant Inventory
f) gratitude reverence and care
g) trees need to be forests, not baseball bats
h) Kevin the Turkey
a) UNITARIAN EARTH DAY
27th Ave and 16th Street.
Always a lively presentation of Issues and fresh perspectives during the service on Sunday. Then a bodacious coffee hour afterwards with the nicest people in Vero.
Earth Day is on the way, it's always on the way, right? And people at the UU like to say, let's make every day, Earth Day.
Okay, let’s do that.
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How can you turn your yard or civic facility into a garden that would be useful for birds, butterflies and pollinating insects, and a safe harbor for all life. Not just something created for looks, but a home for all the pollinators. Migrating or resident, rapid population declines of many insects, Bats, Moths, Beetles, Birds and Bees, are jeopardizing the pollination of your EVERYONES fruits and vegetables.
Everyone wants to park in the shade, but no one wants to plant the trees. background music
How did trees manage for millions of years without Joe's Landscaping, and big bags of fertilizer? Let's try and figure that out. How come the Oaks at the UU site are dropping all their leaves already in December? In fact, they seem to be dropping them all year long, and so, why are they so stressed, dying one by one over the past ten years? People have noticed this nearly continuous drop of leaves.
First of all, the Laurel Oaks have a short lifespan, and someone planted them 40-50 years ago. Look at how much asphalt covers their roots today and ask yourself, how are they even alive? They are stressed, and the Oak near the ministers parking spot has the disease illustrated in this video.
In Florida, the Oaks do not have the big taproot that snowbirds are familiar with, but instead, they will spread their roots sideways, 50 or more feet. Books say 150 feet.
So I'm suggesting this facility to lose 20 parking spaces and remove the asphalt as it's being pushed up by the trees. Previous to the recent recovering of the asphalt, I had picked up quite a few road chunks.
Paint a green line to indicate that it is now a "green space" and not a trip and fall liability. I mean go and look at the tar covered roots. It's kind of sad. The next one to die has a telltale death fungus at the base, I just noticed. Right at the entrance.
I got a plan. The Oak is going to die. Dick has indicated he'd be willing to pay for a paver lined walkway through the Memorial Garden and most of the new plants are so completely bereft of wildlife value it would be no loss to put them elsewhere.
The intention of the new Atrium Garden at the UU property was to bring the indoor Green Sanctuary idea, to the outdoors. As a result, there are always at least ten plants blooming or fruiting in the Atrium, all year long. I counted in 2023.
Goldenrod, Aster, Rouge Plant, Marlberry, White Indigoberry and Simpson Stopper are all native plants that were prolifically flowering and/or fruiting this year in the Atrium Garden. This is why I am making these things known now. People only see plants and assume all plants are good. Goldenrod and Aster are blooming right now in November to greet the Snowbirds and the Asters are covered in Honeybees and you have to wonder how they find flowers completely surrounded by walls?
The Atrium is not designed to be pretty and orderly like a gated community entrance, but wild and spontaneous with blooming flowers and colorful leaf displays that change and evolve. I didn't think this would be a difficult concept for people to understand but I find very few even notice the Atrium Garden is there. The Red Salvia are dominating at the moment but it's always changing.
Now I see no one knew quite what I was trying to do. It's why I called my business The Garden Green. Sometimes gardening, always green.
Week by week plants get trimmed down and other plants start flowering. It doesn't have to be all natives. Crotons give some of the best color in the Atrium. I'm still waiting for a Blood Lily I transplanted to start blooming. (It did last week). It's a non invasive exotic that is really colorful. My Maypop didn't flower so I cut it all back. In fact I took it out. It had no blooms and was proportionally oversized. Lots of trial and error.
Unfortunately, this form of nature-replicating garden design creates cognitive dissonance with some people. Sedate and stately people like the static landscapes they've grown accustomed to. Spraying chemicals if there is any plant damage or fungus or even leaf spot.
They get what they think is the best look and don't change it all, EVER. They brag that it is a winning formula, but a closer look shows these garden designs are just conglomerations of biotically useless exotics.
Endless, hackneyed platitudinous designs. All these gated community entrances are about selling real estate, and never about recreating the local ecosphere. People understand land values but not the value of the land, or the millions of creatures in every town that depend on it.
I'm at war with these singularly useless plants that do nothing for the thousands of living species that fly or walk or crawl past our properties in Florida. They are looking to eat, sleep, migrate and multiply. Expensive homes packed together in many gated communities in Vero Beach seems to be the trend, but there is no nature flow in these walled in, HOA storm trooper controlled, "neat" and "tidy" landscapes. They are generally lifeless biotic dead zones.
Timely tip: Florida State law concerning Florida friendly plants over rides any HOA restrictions. So find that list. Wait! Here it is. Florida-Friendly Native Plants & Database - Florida Yards
As it stands now, the one large Simpson stopper in the Atrium had more fruit to offer than the entire Memorial Garden did all summer. Once the fruit ripened in July and August, it was gone. The birds are in there at 4 in the morning when you can't see them. Flying in and feeding. Hopping around looking for insect appetizers.
It seems people are not making the connection between the nature shows they watch on TV and the nature right outside their door. Nature needs to be alive and everywhere. It's always a delight to see Earthworms. They make soil. They live in the leaves. But something went wrong in the Memorial Garden.
The two feature plants I bought 13 years ago for the Atrium, were a White Indigoberry and the Simpson Stopper. Big $60 plants. 10% of the total budget. A big commitment of cash, they are still there, and they both have had seedlings growing nearby and fruit taken by birds. Feeding the birds for ten years now. The new exotic introductions in the Memorial Garden will never feed anything and most of them have died.
For the wild life, there is literally more to eat in the Atrium than the remainder of the 4 acre Unitarian Universalists of Vero Beach property. I saw a Mockingbird the other day from the window eating the heck out of the Marlberry berries. You won't find any fruiting shrubs for birds anywhere else on the property.
I want the chance to bring life to the remainder of the property. In the Memorial Garden there was evidence of Leaf Cutter Bees living nearby, but otherwise I literally saw no insects of any kind this summer. No butterflies or birds. No colorful insects passing through.
I'm trying to educate people about weeds and wildflowers and then it occurs to me, sure, the UU site is a wasteland for nature, but are there ANY local places that emphasize about wildlife first? We look around and see... prosaic ...formulaic ... everywhere you go.
On the positive side, Audobon at Oslo Rd. has recently created three native gardens in public places and people need to get out and see them. Saw the one at UP's today. Cheap food with no nutrition there, but the native plants are filling in good. Very informative signage. They also did one near the Motor Vehicle Department on 27th that was maturing nicely I noticed a couple months back.
I went to the Unity Church once, down the street, to look at the Labyrinth, and that was interesting. Now I'm wondering about the wildlife value of the plants on that property.
This is what you ask yourself when you go home today ... what would a Painted Bunting find to eat in this yard as it flies to it's summer feeding grounds up north. Earth Day, remember?
I should go and visit to REALLY look at what the Unity Church is offering wildlife besides a labyrinth.
My observation is there is a lot of talk about the environment but limited action wherever I go in Vero. Back in the day, UU's didn't just talk about slavery, they participated in the Underground Railroad.
Driving away today, I go south on 27th and see yet another church that has the ubiquitous Hawthorns. Hawthorn hedges. Everywhere. Once the safe, reliable (boring-lifeless) and highly recommended plant to use, it turns out to be junk for nature. Very rarely growing a haw for birds to eat.
You betcha, the local nurseries have been enthusiastically moving a lot of units of this plant. They want sales. They made money. "Best hedge money can buy." Probably enough Hawthorn hedge in Vero to go clear across the state in a straight line.
In fact, it got me thinking it would be fun to start rating sites for their wildlife value all along the Route 60 corridor. Yes, I think I'll do that.
Reverence, gratitude and care,
does not plant a fruiting shrub.
Looking around the Unitarian Universalist property on 27th Avenue, I see numerous Arbicola, way too many of those Hawthorns, and dozens of non-native Eugenia, and ...literally... nothing that wildlife can use in 1000 linear feet of hedge on the Unitarian Universalist property! Why not plant the Simpson Stopper which looks just like the Eugenia but has flowers that pollinating insects love. Fruit that the Birds really love.
Not quite 1000 linear feet of hedges around the property. 150 feet of dead hawthorns were replaced by native Coco Plum on my suggestion. So make that 850 feet. They produced edible fruit for a few years but no longer do because they are being pruned incorrectly.
Hedges don't have to look like cement or brick walls. They can have a variety of plants as did the English hedgerows of old. The trend here for the last 30 years are to plant fast growing hedge material. Plants that want to be 25 feet tall are continually trimmed to much shorter heights. Viburnum Awabuki was ubiquitous. It was getting constantly trimmed. Then it was discovered they have a leaf drop problem and people don't use them anymore.
How else are todays landscaping principles are a problem? There were days in some gated communities where the two cycle fuel from blowers, edgers and chain saws hangs low in the air like fog.
Forcing plants from various regions into the world to adjust to Florida's harsh humid conditions. This is what our designers do. Dirty fuel-powered pruners, noisily fill our lives with their choppy chatter. Large million dollar properties filled with thousands of biotically useless plants. People all thinking their green 'n shit.
The Bougainville in the first grass parking lot is climbing the Oak again and will look good when it starts to flower, but this South American plant has no value for pollinators here in Florida. It's only benefit is beauty. This 50 foot vine called Bouganville, has been planted against a column near the entrance in the Memorial Garden redesign. It looks bad and it doesn't belong there and I already dread pruning it next summer.
Ask Jack S. why he dug out his Bougainville recently. Dangerous rampart grower with no wildlife value. It's all about looks. You love the flowers but how about some love for our wildlife? Some pride for our earth. Seriously I dread how much the Bouganville is going to grow next summer.
Nurseries don't want people filling their yards with prolifically flowering and fruiting native shrubs such as Rouge plant or Wild Coffee. Before you know it, your yard has filled in with them.
In my opinion, the Wild Coffee hedge planted by Jim around the electrical box, has more wildlife value than ALL the new Memorial Garden plants put together. Fast growing 👸exotics have replaced the natives.
I had something going on there in the Memorial Garden, as I was able to add plants for no cost, culling from native plant babies at other sites and the Atrium. Probably 12 to 15 species of native plants were removed from the memorial garden. As Weeds. You know. Unstructured. Wild.
This isn't the Johns Island Clubhouse, y'all. Lighten up. Why would you want to have it look the same year after year? I'm in it more than anyone. It is completely devoid of nature.
And hedges that look more like walls. Recall, build that wall? Walls aren't cool, yo. Bridges are what we need. Bridges to connect to Nature. Build some walls then, paint them green.
. Native plants regenerate, and so after 13 years there were virtually no costs to the congregation for the Memorial Garden but for my pay as I was able to move native plant babies from the Atrium to the memorial Garden. I was trying to bring the Green Sanctuary idea outdoors into more areas, you see.
Scott Alexander knew what I was talking about and he had me plant a nice habitat in his yard for the time he was here. The new owners tore it all out, as people tend to do.
My only other protocol when I started taking care of the Memorial Garden was to keep the Chalice visible from the street and parking lot and now it's not.
The Chalice is supposed to be the feature, not a stake-dependent, tree-form Hibiscus.
I'm objecting to "volunteers," randomly pulling all plants on this site and also on several other sites, and it's about time to make my objections known. Time to educate people that just because a nursery doesn't sell it, doesn't mean it has no value.
Probably about time to seriously look at my proposed outdoor Green Sanctuary policy. Just waiting for the summer to end. 84 degrees in December. 74 for a morning low. Summer summer go away come back again another day. Like, next May.
I remember Harry installing all the downward facing lights. Wildlife friendly so it lights up where people walk, not in every direction skywards to bother natures nocturnal patterns. That was a green move. But what else has been done? Outdoors? You see plants but learn what they are. Have they any wildlife value?
You know, maybe much has been done and I don't see it. I'm just being a crank to illustrate that there is ALOT that we can go ahead and do for wildlife. Starting right here. Understanding that the web of life isn't out there somewhere ... but right here.
Gaillardia keeps popping up on one site, but the "palm guy" keeps pulling them out as weeds. Usually, just as they are starting to flower.
It's like burning an enemys crops so they starve to death. Plant 1000 plants and never ask if they benefit the local flora and do you wanna fauna, and bugs? That's the Johns island Style. More plants, more profits. Benefit to wildlife? Meh.
I designed the Annex Garden at the Sebastian Town Hall and it has been self-replicating since 1999. I took care of it till about 2010 and today, the only costs are the time spent pruning the two hedges by town workers. These alternative hedges were there to show people that there is a much wider variety of hedging plants, if you take the time to include the natives that have been here a couple of ten thousand years.
It doesn't have to be Hawthorn or Arbicola or an exotic Eugenia hedge. That is the primary point of the Sebastian Town Hall model planting.
Wildflowers bloom year after year without being re-planted! They have re-planted themselves. Continually. Bunnies Tortoises and Birds were instantly attracted to this new garden. I mean the New Jersey people plant their houseplants there and one guy was going to fill the Tortoise holes with water because "turtle'sll wreck your foundation" Fill the hole with water. "That's what'd we'd do in Jersey!"
The Annex Garden is outside the door of the, since relocated, Sebastian Engineering Department, where people got all their permits. It was a MODEL planting for the public at large in Sebastian, probably one of the first native plant gardens in the county.
Previously in the memorial garden, I would add a few bags of peat humus and other soil amendments to feed the soil. This is what forward thinking city planners are encouraging all across the country now. Times have changed. This is what they actually need in the quickly draining, sandy Florida soil. Lots of leaves, some peat humus now and then. Maybe buy a couple bags of mulch now and then to neaten the look up. Sporadic use of mulch enhances the soil. Heavy use results in caking, runoff and fungus problems.
But blame the leaves.
So I had a good thing going on there with wildlife in the Memorial Garden. Did someone see a spider and get scared? A healthy ecosystem has thousands of spiders per acre. Do we plant gardens for people who want an insect-free world, or do we plant for all life?
My business was The Garden Green. Sometimes Gardening, always Green.
Where did the initiative for a sterile, lifeless entrance garden at the Unitarian Universalist property on 27th AVE and 16th, come from? Someone who wanted it to be pretty, and not to be wild? To be like grandmas plastic covered couches. "I'd rather you not sit on them, dear."
Not long ago you would see many Butterflies in the garden. Dragonflies, Spiders. They're gone. Some people see weeds, but nature sees food. Now Nature is gone.
One problem with the re-design of the Memorial Garden is increased pruning time with the newly planted "dwarf" Firebush, Green Gem, and Plumbago. Taking time away from the fall pruning of the Atrium. Pruning in September and October can be brutal on an old body and I had to do many volunteer hours to get the job done.
Oh, and Kentia Palm, Bouganvilla, Thryallis and the other new plants that offer zero food for bees, butterflies, insects and all the little soil creatures always seem to need pruning or grooming. I previously had slow growing short natives. I could take care of the Memorial Garden and Atrium in 6 hours a month. Not any longer. I gardened green and rarely charged for anything. Had to bite my tongue as I saw all my worked raked up as weeds. Why was there no asking me what I thought?
Simply put, the completely wrong plants were placed in the Memorial Garden. Where was the Outdoor Green Sanctuary Committee on this issue? Oh that's right, there is no committee. No planning or oversight for the outdoors at all, near as I can tell. The native plant-oriented additions I had placed the previous ten years were gone. I know Florida Master Gardeners would be shocked at the change, as would any native plant enthusiast.
I went through the Master Gardener program in 1991 when it was still the wild and wooly days where the Citrus bigwigs got all the spoils. Spraying chemicals was the answer to everything. When I took the program again in 2001 and the change was dramatic. Completely overhauled their approach to our yards.
I've had close contacts with Extension agents, award winning landscapers, presidents of Audobon and the Native Plant Society and I know what the right thing to do is. Your Johns Island style of "gardening" is not the right thing to do. Colorful trendy plants from the other side of the world do nothing for the abundance of Florida outdoor life and the nurseries have their shelves stocked with weed and insect killers for these unnatural aliens.
No pollen, no nectar no fruit. Just big showy flowers for people that can't design past color and placement. Where do they come up with this exotic folderol? And this summer, the new plants are not even any are blooming. This summer there were no showy blooms, but over used water and fertilizer dependent plants, struggling to stay alive.
There's supposed to be big showy flowers on the new dwarf ultra flowerific Hibiscus! I see them planted frequently around town and they just don't hold up. Sittin' in Loews with their giant blooms, but dead in 6 months later in your yard. People blame themselves. Don't. These plants don't belong here.
Then there's the "BUSH DAISIES" from Africa. We have native, yellow daisy like flowers, in dozens of plants. Why plant something from Africa that not a single bird or insect visited all summer?
I showcase these new Memorial Garden plants in blue letters above and below ... so you can research for yourself. Ask yourself: What is their value to wildlife? To all life. I'm recommending everyone to take a look at what "professionally designed" landscapes offer wildlife in Florida. Unnatural nonsense. And expensive.
Also, check the plant list of what was planted and see what is still alive. I mean, who would plant Begonias in May? I looked at them and went 'sorry ... not coming back three times a week to keep them alive'.
1985 called and they want their hackneyed designs back. I was intending to help people advance their knowledge of the plants in our region, but peoples brains are wired from all the Scotts fertilizer commercials and the pesticide commercials of long ago that called for killing all the bugs in your soil. Kill kill kill. Of course the creatures of Nature are going to eat grass. DUH! Spray poison when you see chewed leaves? Of course they are going to eat leaves. You just have to monitor for infestations.
Lots of people made lots of money selling you all the different poisons since WW2. People are also trained to think that anything not sold in the nurseries must be a weed. A major deprogramming is needed. Here it is. Keep going.
Oh, by the way, round these parts, stakes are tacky. But there is one right in the middle of the garden holding up the spindly weakling. This grafted atrocity. One gardening standard I use is to not to stake plants. Start plants out small. That is green gardening. Vegetables sure, but not native plants. I suggest we take the stake off the tree Hibiscus in the Memorial Garden. See what happens. The Chalice is supposed to be the focal point.
New Rule. No plant needs a stake after surviving two summers in Central Florida. You got through two hurricane seasons, now grow some roots and stand up for yourself this fall. The stake is such a sore thumb and tacky considering it's the only plastic in the garden, except for the benches.
I'm having to pull the hose out far more often now, which is even more time expended. What a long summer it's been. The Atrium continually flowering and fruiting while the Memorial Garden is doing what? Just growing needing lots of pruning and watering. Being needy and slowly dying. So I need an increase of at least two hours to maintain the Memorial Garden. K?
Keep in mind when I work in the three FREE gardens I am not charging for the time. Zero cost total for the three areas I developed at no cost. People assume I'm getting six hours of pay A WEEK, not 6 hours a month.
It's been such a waste of my time to water these new Hibiscus' planted right in the middle of the hottest area in that garden. I hate mopping up someone else's vomit, you know. They still look like excreta after a summer of extreme sun and heat. Next summer they have to survive like every other plant. No coddling.
I converted the memorial garden to native plants that I planted and grew, as mentioned, while keeping all the plants from the original hackneyed design of Hawthorn and Rapholepsis. I filled in spaces with plants as they became ready, leaving plenty of lines and curves in the beds. It was constantly changing.
Always changing, it became the opposite of the static, unchanging, lifeless design we have today.
I used plants that I knew from 33 years in Florida, that could take the sunny conditions of the Memorial Garden. I wish I didn't have to watch all these "pretty" exotics die from six months of extreme heat and humidity taking time away from the Atrium which is always flowering and fruiting.
I was able to get plants that I didn't charge the congregation for. Worthy plants that I get rootlings from at usually no cost. They are surplus growth and that's how to stop taking from the earth. Native plants slowly spread as they find conditions they like and can be culled easily as needed.
That is how I maintained the two gardens and only charged the Congregation $500 over the past 13 years. $46.00 a year. Compare to other facilities. I move a lot of plants around. This is how you garden in the green way. "gardening adds years to your life, and life to your years."
The Memorial Garden went from a barely negligible carbon footprint to grossly excessive in the last two years. Two hundred bags of mulch. Plastic bags that can't be recycled.
How many new plants? All those plastic pots went where? 200 bags of mulch. People tell themselves mulching helps in many ways, but there are those gasoline by-products again. Mulch doesnt keep weeds from growing here in Florida is something all these rookies I have to deal with need to learn.
200 empty bags of mulch is like 1000 ziplocks. No recycling them either. The Green Industry is a notorious user of fossil fuel-based containerization. How many gazillion pots lay in our landfills from plants that were planted last year?
Then there's the pelletized fertilizer.
GREENHAMMER: THE GARDEN GREEN (thegrimoireofgreenhammer.blogspot.com)
Hog Plum (wildsouthflorida.com) This has been pulled out two years in a row in the memorial Garden. AS WEEDS. It has come back another year, defying the pulling of it in its previous two previous eradications. Ironic that I have to take care of all these time consuming, non-native plants while tenacious useful natives get torn out. This is a last stand. I'm being asked to pull out the last native plant the Hogplum. I feel like the Lorax saving the last tree.
In support of my Hogplum, I wrote this on one of the pride flags. "I am not a weed, I am a useful native plant that has scented blossoms and large fruit for wildlife. Hogplum Lives Matter."
Never mind the hackneyed choices in the Memorial Garden, there is no plant diversity at all on the entire property. Quite a few Oaks, but they are always stressed, and most of their roots are under the parking lot. They are constantly dropping leaves as a consequence.
The Live Oak can easily live 200 years while the Laurel Oak only lasts 50-60 years, and sometimes much less. Big, impressive trunks make people enthusiastic about the fast growing Laurel Oak at first, till the roots start buckling sidewalks and taking over parking lots. Some bad planning about forty years ago.
We did discuss today after the Zoom meeting whether they were Live Oaks or Laurel Oaks. Someone was sure they were Live Oaks. Nah, I dont think so. Look at Katrinas Live Oak at the east end of the first grass parking lot. That's what a Live Oak looks like.
Also Dahoon Holly are looking good. After seeing how well they were doing in Sebastians planting and parks plan, I suggested them as replacement for the rapidly declining Oak population.
How about we stop covering the Oak Tree roots with tar? This might be a good way to encourage conservation among the congregation. Green Sanctuary outdoors! Hey look guys! We are closing 20 parking spots to make parking available for less polluting vehicles and to let the roots breathe. How about a bike to church Sunday?
Reverend Scott would sometimes drive ten miles on his bicycle before work. He knows how to get out and be in nature. But I'm of the opinion he drove more miles than the entire congregation combined, and I'm not counting his cross-country miles for hunger.
Where are the conservation efforts? What are UU's across the country doing to enhance nature? The idea of the Green Sanctuary outdoors might be puzzling to some people but there is a need to go beyond recycled toilet paper and dimming the lights to save energy. That's tokenism. Then thinking the pollution and recycling problems are thereby solved, that's self-delusion.
You may see plants around the property but I see the biotic dead zone it actually is.
UU's should be encouraging conservation in every aspect of life, and I'm just not seeing it.
SOOOOO....
Do we want to make a long term plan now or 20 years from now? The building is paid for? What a great time to work on the outdoors!
As it's said, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is today. Luckily, two very small (20 INCH) American Elms were planted six and twelve years ago respectively and are growing quite large with a very minimal effort. A little watering when they were little and during a few dry spells, and now they are 16 and 24 feet, respectively. They started as $3, wholesale 1-gallon trees. This is Green. The Garden Green.
This is the green sanctuary. To use as few resources as possible, for the desired green effect. Right? Throw Oak Leaves in the dumpster? Naw, recycle them where they can suppress weed growth.
Curious enough to go visit the nearest UU in Melbourne yesterday. They have a small congregation of 50 people with little money, (there's a wealthy UU on the beach I'm told). Despite that, they planted a large native plant garden at their entrance, and they allow community groups to use their container gardens.
Also, another problem the Facilities Committee needs to face is the brush disposal problem. We took it up at the last meeting. I'm hesitant to prune the American Elms. I still don't know where to put the branches?
I pruned the other Olive tree last week and left the branches to see if they will get taken. Not yet. I really need to prune the olive tree before it grows in the way on the sidewalk or leaning against the building and a hazard during a hurricane.
But a timely prune down below will keep the Elm from getting in the wires in 5 or 10 years. You have to have long term planning with trees. Where do I put the branches?
I completely cleaned up the sloppy Bougainville in the grass parking lot on volunteer time and tossed a bunch of it, but a pile of the big branches still remains.
I want to prune the Juniper in the Atrium but where am I going to put the branches? It's a logjam at this point and we can't keep leaving piles of brush around the property. The Juniper is 5" DBH and probably has some nice venation for woodworking and it needs to be cut down. I wanted to make a xmas tree out of it, string it up with lights but we need to cut it down. Maybe make some wreaths with the needles. Cut it down to three feet and I can make a 6 foot christmas tree out of it.
Replacing the dead looking Hawthorn with Cocoplum on the north side of the Unitarian Universalist property was a good idea a few years back. Finally, a native Florida plant, and a little variety but the stultifying sameness remains elsewhere on this 4 acre site. Dahoon Holly was another good idea.
But, unfortunately, the Cocoplum is not being pruned to encourage flower and fruiting. It's pruned across the top, over and over and over ... zing zing zing. Always the same way and it's dying below. Duh. A plant has to be rejuvenated by pruning down below. This is why the Ilex Schilling has black fungus ridden branches and bare branches below the top layer of leaves.
It never flowers and fruits as it did naturally the first few years after it was planted.
Forced into the role of educator, I'm making it a volunteer project to carefully and gently revive the hedge by the Ministers and Administrators offices. With lots of pictures to show you what I mean. A similar hedge on the west side has died and was pulled out. Can I save this one and then the one on the north side? This looks terrible, but it is the rejuvenation process.
Every time I go by the west side I marvel at the pitiful, hackneyed plant choices. Decades of poor landscape techniques all rolled into one. Same old same old. How much has been spent on irrigation the last 20 years to try and keep this unnatural detritus alive?
As near as I can tell, there has been no real management of the outdoors at this facility. The central west side has six to 12 inches of leaves blown up into the beds, and who would plant 30 foot Bottlebrush in a ten foot space? Oh yeah. Showy Pretty flowers but a heck of a lot of pruning the last 20 years and btw, has anyone seen it flower? I think we need an outdoor person to present these problems and perspectives to the Facilities Council. Someone who can pick up the tar chunks as the Oak roots push them up. Someone to rake the excessive amount of leaves dropped by the parking lot stressed Oaks.
Someone was going to plant Macho Ferns to replace the, dead from stress, Ilex Schillings on the west side? Who was going to water them? I could have, if there was a decent hose. Update. They don't look good yet and hose bibs are broken and hoses stiff and cracked from age.
I'd suggest Ernodea. But those are hard to find, native plants. Expensive, slow growing. Invaluable to wildlife, probably last for decades. Whose got time or money for that? Everything else is planned for the future, why not the outdoors?
The entire Route 60 corridor has had no real plan for feeding and sheltering wildlife either, and landscaping in Indian River County leaves A LOT to be desired when it comes to planting for nature, so don't feel bad.
The art of gardening has been totally lost in this area; $90 an hour landscape architects, who live far from here, can be held responsible. Nurseries and garden clubs need to be called out for the plastic waste and the hackneyed designs they produce.
Enormous plastic waste and selling inappropriate plants from the other side of the world. Plants that are purchased by people from up north, planting with their notions on what Florida should look like. Flower crazed northerners. It's not Michigan or Indiana or South Dakota. I've lived in this area 33 years. We don't have a 100 day growing season where we plant annuals for pizazz. We have to keep things going all year.
b) It's not a dinner party y'all
I continue chatting it up about Floridas 4700 Native plants hoping that number sticks into somebodies head, wherever I go. People don't want to pay for ugly plants or plants that take a while to establish. You want to put work into your future world, get outside.
Next is a simple example of the lack of awareness about native plants. I have yet to see a Rusty Lyonia planted by the anyone in this area. Rusty lyonia - Florida Wildflower Foundation (flawildflowers.org) Not seen one in 20 years in business and I've been in quite a few yards. Hundreds. It's all about making money. Rusty Lyonia ia an expensive slow grower. Easily recognized by its brownish fuzzy color underneath. Birds love the fruit. Tastes like Key Lime Pie to them.
c) Planting for looks, not life.
How do you find a balance
between visual aesthetics, which everyone wants, and wildlife enhancement that people don't understand? Planting as if all the creatures mattered. Are people willing to tolerate a little wildness in their yards and gardens? Is your civic facility ready to shift to native plants?
We will need that wildness to stave off our first brush with insect, animal, and human extinction.
Over ten years ago, it was decided that in order to prevent future flooding problems, much larger drainage pipes needed to be installed in our Atrium at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship on 27th Avenue and 16th St.
The old overgrown, non-native plant garden in the Atrium was extracted and all the rats ran hither and yon into the mouths of Black Racer Snakes. All the plants were pulled out as part of the project that included adding an elevator so everyone could have second floor access.
The Atrium garden area was a literal tabula rasa, a blank slate. I did save a Thatch Palm, (not really sure, some kind of Coccothrinax, that looks like a Sabal Palm), and a Firebush, but was given carte blanche to create something new. This Thatch Palm has ironically been targeted for elimination because ...JUMPING RATS ... get on the roof and invade the building by jumping off palm fronds.
An important part of the new Atrium Project was to find plants that could survive rugged situations (full sun, reflective heat and compromised air circulation), and plants that could also be beneficial to wildlife. How to plant as if Nature mattered in an enclosed outdoor garden surrounded by four walls and no other plants within 50 feet. Yesterday I saw a bigger variety of insects in there than I could see if I looked through the entire property.
tabula rasa
All that was left was dead sub-soil, churned up, so 18" drainage pipes could be put in. The new plants were planted with bagged soil and were foliar fertilized eventually with Fish Emulsion. I charged $1350 and managed to get at least 30 native plants in there. Not a purist, I used some exotics for variety.
In place for 13 years now I have spent less than $200 on replacement plants, fertilizer and mulch in the Atrium. That's like, $15 dollars a year. I'm telling you I know what I'm doing.
Just think about the billions of animals that have starved to death with all this delirious development in Florida since 1960. Billions of fruiting shrubs like Huckleberry and Blueberry along with fields of Wild Coffee and Simpson Stopper all plowed into burn piles. It was a garden of 'eatin for birds travelling the Atlantic Flyway. Then They Paved Paradise, as everyone was out to become millionaires.
d) "The magic of creation is contained in a tiny seed."
Look at a book with all the Florida habitats and you realize most yards,
do not resemble the wild lands in any way. Landscapes in this area are like flower arrangements at a dinner party to most people. It just has to look good. Very few yards replicate our wild lands and as I drive around town, it's yard after yard filled with useless plants.
The earth doesn't need us to save her; she can shake us off with a mass extinction. What we CAN DO, is replant our yards and common areas to connect with larger, nearby ecosystems, and be a healthy cell in a sick, poisoned world. What's that 7th principle again? Because why? The survival of the humans would be the answer.
7th Principle: "Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part." Respect has yet to plant a tree. Can't work a shovel, you know?
Now we ask ourselves. What plants were here before the nurseries and landscape architects' quest for profit these last 75 years in Florida as every thing was cleared for development?
The latest trendy plant is what the nurseries are about. Not the Lyonia as I mentioned. Too much work and cost. Easier to sell colorful cultivars robbed of their scents and essence. Those flower crazed northerners again.
Come on in and buy a ton of mulch too. Hey, you need this expensive fungicide if you want to save your plant. Hey, you need this tree sitting out in the hot Florida sun all day, so you come back and buy another one after it dies.
Driving back today I see two people dutifully planting a palm from the Philippines or something, and I say to myself, oh great, another plant that birds and insects can't use. They fly right by. It's sad every time to me, because I know people think planting a tree is somehow helping the environment. But getting that Palm Tree big enough to sell in a 7 gallon pot required lots of pelletized fertilizer and Peat Moss, along with several plastic pots. Heavy carbon-hurling content there, Hoss.
I drive by yard after yard here in Indian River County and wonder what will the insects and birds and reptiles and mammals eat? Most of the plants in people yards have absolutely no value for wildlife. Zero. People plant Ixora for looks. It's poisonous berries not filling any bellies. Ever see a Songbird near an Ixora hedge? No, you haven't.
I did an experiment last year with the other Palm Tree in the Atrium. The frond stems were covered in Scale, a dreaded pest insect, and they were caked thick on the frond stem. I cut the big part away, and left 18" of the stems and they were completely covered with Scale.
f)
I promote the idea of not using chemicals and using less or no fertilizer, along with the elimination of irrigation systems. That toxic accident in Ohio one year ago today? The worst aspect of the spill was the Poly Vinyl Chloride that is used to make PVC irrigation pipe.
A million miles of this horrendous plastic is hidden underground for irrigation purposes. That is enough to go to the Moon and back twice. M'kay? And it's all underground where nobody sees it too. Those unborn will be pulling out as much as possible as it begins to degrade in the decades ahead.
Put your plants together in islands so they feed on the fallen leaves of different plants and shade each other from the wicked Florida Sun. I encourage people to save the grass that is growing exceptionally well but plant plants in groups. And unmown large, wild areas should be a given. Learn to run a hose.
Your most vulnerable plants can be watered with a hose during dry spells, and you can save yourself the folderol of irrigation. Do you know what these irrigation companies charge just to drive to your house for a repair? You can't figure out when the soil is dry? Come on, use your head for something other than a hat rack.
Irrigation for what? For vanity. To keep something alive, where it doesn’t belong. Plant slavery. Enshackled to colonialism.
FANCY PLANTS NURSERY
"free advice, expensive plants"
I'll tell you what. I had a customer that showed me how much a visit by the local plant columnist cost her. $150 for two hours and that was over five years ago. She is a lecturer and county extension agent and presumably the best in her field. I've always been the reasonably priced gardener for the working class so don't hesitate to ask questions. Though people only seem to want to know how to keep ants out of their house..
UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST PLANT INVENTORY
The ones in blue are new to the garden. My point being that we are veering away from our outdoor Green Sanctuary by planting these exotics from the other side of Earth. 1985 called and they want their chemical filled curb appeal back.
"Respect for the interdependent web of all existence" Sound familiar. It should.
I don't see many birds on the property, but in the last week I've seen Catbirds, Cardinals, Woodpeckers, Doves, a bunch of Yellow Warblers, (I think) Mockingbirds, Hawks and Blue Jays in the yard I've been taking care of the last twenty-five years. It's a Birdgarden designed to feed and house them. On a tiny 80x120 lot.
I've got food in the yard. Wild Coffee berries, Marlberries, Starfruit. A gang of Warblers were having a feast on something in my mature Ulmus americana. Bouncing on the branches gorging themselves on something.
As I said, the small coffee hedge around the electrical box at the UU site is more valuable to wild life than all these plants I have notated in BLUE. Packed with pollinators when it flowers and visited by birds and mammals when it fruits, Wild Coffee should be a staple for bright but shady areas. We can fill in all the weak hedge areas with Wild Coffee.
THE NEW ARE IN BLUE
DRACENA Wildlife value? Probably none.
TI PLANT Looking raggedy here in February. Previously planted near entrance to slow down roof drainage, that bunch doesn't look good either.
ARBICOLA “chinette” a more pronounced variegation and very attractive, but no apparent wildlife value. Driving around today I noticed, it's like, one third of the plants in all the local landscapes. Wildlife value --- zero. Then why are they the answer to most peoples plant designs?
How to say I don't know how to plant for wildlife without saying u don't know what it takes to plant for wildlife. Like religion is the last refuge of a scoundrel, Arbicolas are a plant of last resort for those that don't want to make the effort for the wild things. Count on plenty of pruning time too.
Why are there hundreds of mostly Green Arbicolas on the UU property? They are the most, dead to wildlife, plant I've come to know. I've pruned many of them over the years on many accounts and they harbor no life and are rampant, annoying growers that root as they go.
Apparently, it's the only plant people can keep alive. You really need an outdoor person to replant these dead areas with native plants such as Gopher Apple that feeds tortoises and other ground feeders such as Doves. Wild Coffee will fill in all the dead spots in the hedges once you get them started. As would Marlberry, Fiddlewood and other prolifically berried natives. I got a bunch of baby White Indigo Berry plants in the Atrium I'm hoping to plant somewhere. Though I have tried to move two out and they died so there is a lot of trial and error.
The UU site on 27th and 16th is in dire need of outdoor management. Oak leaves from stressed Oak trees always make the Pre-school area look really messy. Thick and slippery everywhere. As a volunteer I've been raking them up and moving barrels full of Oak leaves into areas that need them such as the south side desert garden.
The lawn mowing people blow leaves willy nilly into areas they shouldn't be. It's like when you shovel the snow off your driveway and the snow plow comes along and leaves a huge pile of snow in your driveway. That's how clueless the whole outside operation seems to me.
BROMELIADS wildlife value? some water for lizards and others, maybe. Not even a good look right now at the entrance. I cleaned the dead leaves out of them twice this summer. How many hours should I devote to pulling the dead leaves? Show me a Bromeliad that looks good. Wait there is one. Planted under the Olive Tree it's just beginning to flower.
I try to integrate the plants used during service but they didn't do very well on the north side.
PLUMBAGO Bees are attracted, but the nectar is too deep in the flower for them and other local insects to utilize. A big waste of their time. Spiderwort would give us the blue flowers we crave, but they all got pulled out as weeds! Spiderwort was one of the natives removed as weeds along with Scorpions Tail and quite a few other useful plants such as the southern favorite, Blue Love Grass.
Plumbago is adapted to its native bioregion in China, so remember that, if you decide to move there.
BOUGANVILLA colorful papery bracts is what we see, and to pollinators it's like eating cardboard. The flowers are really tiny and they may have a minute amount of nectar for tiny moths. There are Inchworm infestations on Bouganville July to December and you can bet the gated communities will be spraying poison on them. Let them eat the leaves or kill the caterpillars? Pest caterpillars that turn into annoying moths is all it offers. Minimal wildlife value and a major waste of time pruning. Thorny, they always get you before you're done.
A new BOUGANVILLA is planted where a 40 foot vine shouldn't go in the Memorial Garden. There are so many questions and it's time to find out what the heck people are thinking. Time to dig into the heads of this death cult trying to eliminate nature while they tell themselves they are "being green.".
FLAX LILY Cerulean flax lily ( Dianella ensifolia) from Australia for crying out loud. In China, it’s believed the blue berries from the Flax Lily kills cows. (I hope by this point you are picking up the patterns. It's about sales and not seeds.)
CROWN OF THORNS sap can cause nausea and diarrhea in humans. Still searching if there is any wildlife value. Maybe in Madagascar where it's from, but at best, it can be pretty, and I've used them in different areas here.
Peel back another layer of this death cult and what we find is another form of colonialism. Botanists found all these marvelous, colorful, unique plants from around the world as they scouted out places to plunder and exploit. Pithy explorers with their Pith helmets. They brought these crazy exotic plants back to show the people who sponsored them. “Does doth please thee, your highness.”
Then these exotic plants become trendy, so I am hoping to make people understand that the nursery business in the last 150 years, has been about profits, not pollinators. Birds insects and other pollinators adjust over thousands and million of years to the plants on their migration routes. Whether it's China or Madagascar or Liberia.
Birds feed their helpless young, and this food consists of 95% live prey. The quicker they can find some breakfast for the babies,
the more time they can spend in the nest,
and be with their families. So are you anti-family? Don’t all families matter? Many songbirds are endangered, humans not so much, and it's time to give them some consideration.
Something to remember is that 99% of the insects that come into your yard will not cause harm to your plants. The Master Gardener Program is emphatic about this. Insects are pollinating vegetable gardens and fruit trees and everything else, or just eating other insects or getting eaten themselves. All of wildlife out there, all murdering each other, lol. Then there are the people (and entire gated communities), that want every bug dead. Green Ethics? NIMBY>
Insects are the fresh meat needed for bird nestlings in the spring and an important food for resident birds in the summer. SO WHERE HAVE ALL THE INSECTS GONE? They have nowhere to go with all these lame-ass landscapes, so they die. No wher to go and nothing to eat.
The problem is that the native plants in this area are not showy and colorful, unless you like seeing a Cardinal sitting on a branch eating Wild Coffee (Psychotria) berries. Or a Blue Jay sitting in an old Simpson Stopper looking for a water source, or maybe a Painted Bunting feasting on something you planted, as it gets some calories to fly to Cancun. Now that's some real color!
\
Lizards need things to climb. Places to hide. Especially now with those giant, orange, Evil Lizards prowling about. We want to protect the little guys and probably the last thing we want to do is rake the leaves out before mulching. In fact, many people might not know how mulching kills insect activity. That little lizard hiding under a leaf is just one of the many creatures found in the leaves.
Psychotria nervosa berries. What birds eat. Plants in blue have nothing to offer
h) GRATITUDE REVERENCE AND CARE?
With this exotic, divergent ecosphere of plants from all around the world in the UU Memorial Garden at the moment, Nature seems absent. Do you want one garden that looks good? Right in the center of the outside area? Why not? That's your choice.
Or do we really want to follow the seventh principle of the Unitarian Universalists that states respect for nature. Respect has yet to plant a fruiting shrub. No thumbs, lousy helper.
A 4 ounce bird has just flown 250 miles hopping from one island to the next looking for food and shelter as it migrates north. She goes to the cookie cutter house in the gated community, and she sees oleanders, ixora, plumbago, philodendron and other popular, same old same old, non-native plants. Then off to the next house....no food there either.
The yard looks great to the judgmental HOA’s. All neat and tidy. HOA”s are another detriment to enhancing our ecosystems with their policies on neatness. A wild garden is going to be messy. Life begins in the dead things. Under logs, under rocks, under leaves. Ground feeders eating seeds
Lizards also like a perch as they hunt for prey. I like to place rocks in rockless Florida yards. Lizards climb up. Insects burrow underneath. Creatures that birds like to eat, live around rocks or brush piles, not on four inches of mulch. Ain't nobody round these parts what can eat da mulch.
Please understand this … what looks good are plants that are very likely, from various places around the world. It’s the Age of Information. One last time. ASK YOURSELF --- How will these plants I'm going to purchase enhance wildlife? It’s easy to learn. Learn the plants you see every day. How do they function in the ecosystem?
Wedelia, Scheflerra, Asparagus Fern and other detrimental ecosystem destroyers need to be ostracized from all our gardens.
I'm available. Easy to find. As a botanist/horticulturalist and professional gardener the last 40 years I'm sure I have been underpaid and the reason is because bankers, accountants and lawyers have become important while those that work with our living planet are not highly regarded.
There was an ecumenical effort where about 5 churches all planted an Olive Tree. I'd like to see where the others are planted. The UU and the Temple among them. Our olive needs to be pruned again. You see, the five churches all planted Olives and we would all theoretically create olive oil from squeezing all our Olives together and, we would all use, in like, a peaceful loving ceremony or something. The only problem being they don't produce Olives in this area.
One more time. This is not Indiana or South Dakota. We are Central Florida Proud. BTW ...when is Ecosystem Pride Month?
Finally, that little four ounce bird that we observed is now starving, she flies over to the mainland and into my yard with White Indigo berry, Wild Coffee, Tamarind, Elderberry, sugar cane, Fiddlewood, Maypop (passion vine) and Marl berry. Saw palmetto Snowberry and a few dozen others. Like, 80 other varieties. If not fruiting, they are flowering, which attracts the many pollinating insects that birds love to eat. Once again this is why a 80x120 yard can contain more bird nests than an entire 4 acre facility that claims to have green aspirations. Planning. And Stewardship. If you think there is a climate crisis, then it is time to stop kicking the can down the road.
Garden
clubs and nurseries as the enemies of nature.
European Honeybees are not our best pollinators. They retain as little as 10% of their pollen in their travels, whereas a native bee is caked thick with pollen and consequently has higher pollination rates. Even this one little fact is not general knowledge.
As THE GARDEN GREEN I spent twenty years proving fertilizer and irrigation and pesticides aren't needed for a native planting. It doesn’t have to be messy either. No pest problems. Everything grows slow. Honest I am your low carbon footprint solution.
I chose to try and prove chemicals and irrigation
weren't needed in our gardens in this already poisoned world.
And to me
personally, I was out to prove that a diversity of plants, leads to a yard that
doesn't have problems with pest insect population explosions.
Most people treat plants like indoor furniture, you know,
it’s all about how it looks. Like a prototype car with no engine, it doesn’t
work in nature.
A lizard gets it’s drink
from water drops on the leaves. A bird feeds its babies with live insects and
most people don’t know about the billions of tiny creatures in the soil, or the
hundreds of spiders in their hopefully, unsprayed yards.
Dragonflies scan their horizon when they rest on the dead tips of plants. Life thrives in the brush pile and dead flower spikes, not under four inches of mulch.
My concern is the 50% reduction of songbirds the last 50 years. My yard was not flashy and colorful with the big blooms because native plants tend to have small blooms. But by USING SOME OF Floridas 4700 plants you will find there are other useful attributes. Then again there are what I categorize as "worthy exotics."
Native plants such as Fiddlewood and Marlberry are strongly scented with medium sized
dark colored berries and birds are well fed when they arrive from up north on their
journey south. Grasses provide seeds the smaller birds enjoy. Grasses that seed in the spring feed them when they come back in the spring to fly north. BUT IT DOESN’T HAVE
GIANT COLORFUL PUFFY BLOOMS.
Do you want to feed
animals and insects and look good in a wild way, or do we want a world devoid of all but human life? We have
to stop right now and ask that question.
The colorful biological deserts of most yards may have their "curb appeal," but I would rather have "mother nature appeal" a balancing of all life, a healthy cell in a sick world. I think most people would if they knew better. This story is a deprogramming device for us to think new. Think smart nature.
WEED OR WILDFLOWER?
1 FROG Fruit
2 fleabane
3 spanish needle
My original intention was to make a list of "weeds" that should be seen as wildflowers. This is what I mean by "under construction". My professional goal is to make people aware of all life and what weeds we need to keep and then educate the general public these "weeds" don't need to be sprayed or pulled. How to Tell Weeds from Wildflowers - Our Wild Garden
Gardening also requires more time and attention than people are used to. You’re too busy to garden? More like, you’re too busy. Fix that.
Kevin the Turkey Kevin the Turkey attempted to take back the land of his ancestors. He was a polarizing figure in Wethersfield Connecticut and had a large following on Facebook.
He gave me an idea for the germ of an article regarding wildlife returning to populated areas that were once their genetically encoded forage areas. KEVIN THE TURKEY===Birds have large areas they forage in and Kevin was brave enough to mix with the human population.
I would certainly hope no one was feeding Kevin the Wild Turkey, but on the other hand Kevin needed to stay away from people who want him to be safe. This is such a teaching moment. We wanted Kevin to have his freedom and reclaim the land of his ancestors, but he was chasing small trucks and blocking roads. It was Nature In our Face.
We held our breath fearing the day when we would read that
Kevin got hit by a truck he was chasing, but conveniently forget the millions of animals whose
habitat was destroyed as Wethersfield went from farms, forests and wetlands, to
suburbs, stores and sprawl.
Baby bunnies buried as the foundation of your house was being poured. All that prosperity in Wethersfield. Meanwhile Muskrats were starving and hiding when their wetland was filled in during the silent slaughter created by "civilization". Beavers and Weasels long lost to the empty ecosystem dominated today by Squirrels and Raccoons. Large bug eating animals such as Skunks and Possums are on the ropes in all these communities.
Everything wild about America was tamed and Kevin the
Wethersfield Turkey is the symbol of what we once were. There are many ways
to integrate wild life back into our life and we need to learn that. Plant trees that have nuts that wild
turkeys like, and grow native grasses so turkeys can harvest the seeds. Prune
up the canopies of the numerous beautiful trees in Olde Wethersfield so Kevin
can fly low like turkeys do.
Kevin reclaiming the ancient hunting grounds and America is
finally ready to stop cavalierly running over wild life. A perfect storm of goodness. The cavalier attitude towards
animal suffering in the 5/60’s has been put to the test as a social norm these
last 60 years and has failed. Kevin symbolizes the wildness we have lost and please ... don't
let the Quilting Club knit sweaters for him.
PART TWO
VANITY OR EXTINCTION?
Reverence, gratitude and care is what the Unitarian Universalist Green Sanctuary 2030 discusses. But how are UU's stewarding the properties they own? How does our property stack up as a nature-embracing sanctuary? Not very well. I think we need some dramatic improvements, and I will bring it up at a Facilities meeting. Looks like the Unitarian Universalist site in West Melbourne has lots of trees. But what kind of trees? Shrubs and wildflowers are the most prolific food providers. With a small group of volunteers, they made a garden anyways. easy to walk through. Some good choices.
.jpg)
Native ASTER blooms every November in the Atrium
IXORAS are from tropical Asia and they used to be problematic because they looked bad after cold winters. But we don’t seem to have cold winters anymore and Ixoras are looking good this year and nurseries are selling lots of them. Do we need to consider the well-known toxic components of Ixora? Possibly toxic to Dogs, it’s being looked into. Meanwhile let's get serious about what we plant. Ixoras have no useful contribution to our Indian River Regions Biosphere. Nothing. Why were they planted?
Ixoras have no use here other than to give color. Eye candy. The choice is yours. A splash of color but dying, starving wildlife.
Vanity and extinction, or diversity and life? Make your voice heard. Somebody help me out here.
FIDDLEWOOD. Native pollinator magnet and has a gentle gardenia/jasmine scent in its tiny flowers. We have one in the Free Garden, and when it is blooming, people probably don't notice it. They assume that the heavenly scent they detect, is from a Jasmine or something. Fiddlewood also has large fruits that birds love.
KENTIA PALM another one from Australia, is planted near the entrance. People think palms are what Florida is all about, and it’s not. Not in this area. There are 4700 different plants in Florida. Is Kentia Palm from Florida? No. This is where my educational emphasis is going to be. Spotlighting the same old same old twenty plants found county wide, to do what? To purposely look nice. For who? Martha Stewart is coming over? It's not a dinner party y'all.
But guess what! Martha Stewart is no square. She gets it that soil health is plant health, and the following quote is from Martha Stewart Magazine. "Phillips recommends adding food compost to the area to create a nutrient-rich soil without the need for potentially toxic fertilizers. "The best amendment for a native habitat garden is compost," she explains.
"Compost conserves kitchen waste and naturally enriches the soil." Martha Stewart. Coffee Hour coffee grounds. A couple of tons the last ten years, right? Part of the nutrient deprived soil? Nope, in the dump with all that packaging Amazon has created.
I loved reading this from Martha Stewart magazine because I used to dig holes and slowly fill them with kitchen waste and cover each addition with little shovelfuls of dirt or leaves. I never liked hours and hours turning a compost bin. It didn't seem right.
Go to the northeast parking lot and I see the two ...
AMERICAN ELMS and they are doing well. Tick eating Possums would welcome any seeds they could grow. Many caterpillars are born in them, feeding the birds that visit. Not to toot my own horn, but those are two large trees that cost the congregation nothing. I am making this strong case now because I feel my volunteer efforts have been in vain. No one even seems curious and when I talk about nature, people eyes glaze over. .jpg)
WHITE INDIGOBERRY A Florida native with attractive glossy leaves and useful fruit for Birds, Possums and others. White fruit that is vividly colored purple inside. It attracts numerous wasps, flies, Oblique Stripetails, bees and a host of other pollinators, and we have a beautiful example of one in the Atrium. It's about four feet tall on the far right.
ROUGE PLANT. Another useful native I almost forgot to mention. That of the numerous red berries. They eat fruit, not pretty Bromeliads. We have 10 or 20 of them, once again, at no cost to the congregation. How? I transplanted a few from another location. I mean no one is even curious about the outdoors at the UU as far as i can see. Kristy knows quite a lot as do Kim, Jim and Katrina previously, but Kristy has more than enough work as it is indoors. I tell people 6 hours a month is what I get paid for. A month they say? It needs that per week most horticulturalists would agree. I am not a rich retiree and there is only so much volunteer work I can do.
SIMPSON STOPPER So beloved by the local native plant chapter. They call themselves the Eugenia chapter. Named Eugenia simpsonii before it was reclassified as Myrcianthus. It’s pruned as a topiary in the Atrium, and had hundreds of little red fruits. The fruit didn't fall to the ground, the birds got them, except for a few late ripeners that are still on the plant. They're out there real early, like 4 or 5 o'clock when they know no one is around. Someone had a feast when they found them. Gone in a week.
When it came time to replace the shopworn Hawthorn, I was able to convince the committee to plant 130 Cocoplum. They are a native and hosts so many pollinators but are slowly going dead with our modern hurry up and prune style of care.
There's the question. Hershey Gardens or Oslo Park? Looks or Life? Pretty or useful? The era of vanity projects is over, and I'm determined to bring the congregation into the 21st century.
In the United States we have been sold a bill of goods regarding lawns and colorful Asian or African plants. Why not use the most beautiful plants and largest blooms? Kill all the soil insects and have a perfect lawn. Yeehaw! Makes no sense now, but it is still engrained in peoples minds from all the commercials in the past. It's like people don't understand the first thing about soil. "It turns to mud when it's wet, right?"
I hope I'm clearing things up.
Ecosphere is described this way. "the biosphere of the earth, especially the interaction between the living and nonliving components. What is habitable for living organisms." You representin' a Ecosphere or a Biotic Dead Zone?
GOLDENROD Just getting ready to bloom, the usual fears of its pollen will be mentioned. Even if it were the cause of Hayfever, it’s isolated from everything, 50 feet from any door. It gets confused with Ragweed that is the actual problem plant. This is a new introduction in the Atrium that did fairly well last year and was a small insect magnet. Update: came back at no cost to the congregation this November and it was somehow full of Honeybees.
Giving you a choice here. Are UU's in the vanguard of restoring life to our yards?
Very little money is needed to maintain a native planting. That’s the secret the Nurseries don’t want you to know.
- (of a remark or statement) used too often to be interesting or thoughtful; hackneyed:"this may sound platitudinous"
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