This is the season for marlberry

Marlberry is my favorite all purpose shrub for many reasons.  It grows in full sun, full shade, dry soil and wet soil.  It is just really hard to germinate the seed which is why you don't see it in most nurseries.

Even if you start with just a small plant, it will grow to 30 feet tall, but usually under 15, and sucker into a meandering screen that gives it a truly natural look.  This is a great way to block out views, as the suckers are just a few inches apart and can be kept at six feet or less  by occasional pruning.

I love the fruity smell of the flowers throughout the year and the large clusters of pea size black berries in March.  This is just when the migrating birds are fattening up before migration.  Catbirds will clean your shrub of almost all berries.

The marlberry in the photo is just three years after planting from a 7 gal. pot.  I picked one gallon of berries from each of the three plants that are now ten feet tall.  Too bad that the neighbors have exotics and cats and therefore only an occasional mockingbird, although I did benefit from having a seed source for this years crop of seedlings.

Why use native plants

  Good grief! this is my first blog and my hands are shakinggg.  That said, I have a lot to say about the current state of landscaping in...well, the world.  My wife, Donna, and I have run Meadow Beauty Nursery since 1988 where we specialize in Florida native plants.  We have been active members of the Florida Native Plant Society since 1982 and have landscaped our own 2.5 acre property with hundreds of species of natives.

The reason that we are very passionate about natives is that they provide food in the form of seeds, berries and most important, insects, that feed the young of our local birds.  Woodpeckers, owls, cardinals, great crested flycatchers, blue jays, mockingbirds, brown thrashers, wood ducks and many other birds and animals live and breed here.

Tons of butterflies are everywhere year round and frankly, we see more birds here than we do in a day of bird watching in a preserve.

If you don't care about all this environmental stuff, then I will just say that I trust native plants to do much better in a landscape than the exotics.  It is also easier to keep natives low with once or twice a year hand pruning and to create a natural looking yard by simply combining plants that occur together in nature.

Did I say that the noisy hedge trimmers, leaf blowers and even lawn mowers can be eliminated.  How often do you have to retreat to your house because of the deafening noise and stinky exhaust produced by the typical yard maintenance crew? 

Once your trees and shrubs have grown in, they shade out the weeds and provide leafy mulch from then on.  The first two years are a bit labor intensive, but are not so bad if you start with a thick mulch to keep the weeds out.  Prune just to keep the sizes down if you like or not at all.  I rarely need to pull weeds in the established portions of my yard, although flower beds can be a bit of work due to the sunlight encouraged weeds.  So just go light on the wildflower areas and seal the rest with trees and shrubs and winding paths among them.

We have several newly introduced insect pests in Florida like the white weevil, scale insects and whitefly that you find on the twigs of many shrubs.  Fortunately, organic insecticides will kill them. Your plants will then have a chance to loose the black sooty mold growing on the sugary  poop that scale insects and aphids drop on the leaves below.

 So please let me know how you are doing when planting your yard with natives.  And check out my web site, meadowbeautynursery.com, where I have compiled descriptions of many native plants and how to use them.  Oh! send photos or blueprints of your yard to clwillow@comcast.net and I'll be happy to make suggestions of what plants to use or just correct any mistakes that you might be about to make...for free!
I hope to hear from you,
Carl Terwilliger
561-601-9673