Florida Friendly Gardening

It doesn’t take much to get Carin Bicker talking about plants. You might even say she surrounds herself with them. In fact, she has more plants than she has grass in both her front yard and back yard.  She has a Florida Friendly Garden. 

In 2009, Bicker and her neighbors Bill and Barbara Bloodgood planted the first two Florida Friendly Gardens, side-by-side in The Groves.  They planted these gardens just after Gov. Charlie Crist signed a bill that allowed homeowners to tear out their grass and replace it with a Florida Friendly Garden.  

A Florida Friendly Garden is one that reduces the need for water, fertilizer, pesticides, and pruning by using low-maintenance plants suited to the conditions in your yard. The idea is that the homeowner can have a beautiful yard that could save time, energy and money while protecting our environmental future. 

According to University of Florida IFAS Extension (IFAS), there are nine essential principles one should address when creating a Florida Friendly Garden. The IFAS website provides a detailed description of the nine principles listed below:

1.    Right plant, right place - Select plants that match a site’s soil, light, water, and climatic conditions.

2.    Water efficiently - Grouping plants with similar water needs together and zoning your irrigation system appropriately.

3.    Fertilize appropriately - Fertilize according to UF/IFAS recommended rates and application timings to prevent leaching.

4.    Mulch - Mulch helps retain soil moisture, protects plants, and inhibits weed growth

5.    Attract wildlife - Plant plants that provide food, water, and shelter for birds, butterflies, bats, and others, you can help these displaced Floridians while bringing beauty and benefits to your home landscape.

6.    Manage yard pests responsibly - Integrated Pest Management (IPM), a strategy that helps gardeners manage pests with as few chemicals as possible.

7.    Recycle yard waste - Landscape maintenance activities like mowing, pruning, and raking generate yard waste that you can recycle to save money.

8.    Reduce storm water runoff - Florida-Friendly Gardening seeks to retain and use as much of the rainfall and irrigation water that lands on our home landscapes as possible.

9.    Protect waterfront - One of the most important steps you can take to protect any water body is maintaining a 10-foot “maintenance-free zone” around it. Do not mow, fertilize, or use pesticides in this zone.

Bicker and the Bloodgoods followed these guidelines to the letter and did such a great job, that they received the Florida Friendly Water Wise Award in 2009.

Since that time, Bicker and the Bloodgoods consult and help other neighbors in The Groves to establish new Florida Friendly Gardens.  There are six homes just on their street that have turned grass into vibrant colorful and low maintenance gardens. 

Most of the plants in Bicker’s yard are native to Florida, or Florida Friendly (those plants that were brought here from other regions, but that have adapted well in the tricky Florida environment).  In fact during the past two winters she has lost less than 10 percent of her plants.  

Her garden boasts ground covers such as mimosa, peanut, variegated jasmine, lantana, salvia, and railroad vines. She also searches for bushes that stay green year round like Withlachocee, anise, and tea olive bushes. 

Another important aspect to Bicker’s garden is fragrance and colorful flowers such as rose-linda, firebush, penta, and roses. There are a variety of grasses in Bicker’s garden that create movement, and if you look carefully you will even find kumquat and muscadine grapes. 

Throughout her garden Bicker has art pieces, fountains, and even a memorial bench that memorializes her husband. Bicker warns that while homeowners can tear out every piece of their grass, they have to be careful about art or structure they place in their gardens. Often homeowners associations require approval from architectural review committees before installing some of these items, especially in front yards.  

These gardens, while they require less dollars, pesticides and water do not look beautiful without any work. 

“It doesn’t mean you just put in your garden and let it grow. It takes pruning and attention,” Bicker says.  She suggests that a homeowner start with a few beds, but always plan in advance.  

The IFAS website has an interactive yard design http://www.floridayards.org/interactive/index.php that homeowners can use to draw out their plans that actually explains which plants are good for certain parts of your yard. 

Homeowners are not the only ones that can save by using Florida Friendly Gardens. Many of our neighborhoods spend our community dollars to replant annuals or replant sod in tough to maintain areas, such as under trees or on sandy areas that erode easily. 

“When I see plants being replanted to cover bare spots in our communities, I think why don’t we just put in ground cover,” Bicker says. 

It’s a start, and something anyone might suggest just by educating themselves about Florida Friendly Gardening. 

For many more details about Florida Friendly Gardens to http://fyn.ifas.ufl.edu/homeowners/nine_principles.htm.