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