Winter Bliss and Climate Challenges in North Florida Gardens
Gardening is far more than a pastime, it’s an endeavor that demands patience, skill, and dedication. Every plant requires careful attention to thrive, and every gardener knows the challenge of protecting their landscape against nature’s shifting moods.
In North Florida, winters from December through February are typically mild, offering residents the chance to cultivate cool-season vegetables, hardy ornamentals, and lush greenery that brighten homes even in the colder months. These gardens are more than decoration; they are living investments in beauty, wellness, and community pride.
Yet, the increasing instability of seasonal patterns has thrown gardeners off balance. Sudden frosts, unexpected heat spikes, and shifting rhythms test both resilience and creativity. What once felt like a predictable cycle now requires constant vigilance, as climate change reshapes the very environment in which these gardens grow. For North Florida residents, tending a garden is not just about nurturing plants, it’s about nurturing joy, identity, and a connection to place, even as the climate itself becomes more uncertain.
Photo credit: Donna Arnold,FAMU Extension.
The Growing Challenge of Climate Change
In recent years, gardeners have faced out-of-season frosts that damage cold-sensitive plants such as citrus, hibiscus, and tropical ornamentals. Unlike commercial growers with greenhouses, most homeowners lack protective infrastructure, leaving their landscapes exposed. The financial loss of damaged plantings can be significant, but the emotional toll of watching cherished gardens succumb to sudden freezes is equally profound.
Climate change intensifies these challenges. Stronger cold fronts and occasional winter heat spikes disrupt plant growth, weakening resilience and reducing vitality. Homeowners often resort to improvised measures, blankets, plastic sheeting, or makeshift covers, that provide only temporary protection. Without specialized forecasting tools, residents rely on local news or apps, which may overlook microclimate variations across neighborhoods.
Weather vs. Climate: Why It Matters
It’s important to distinguish between weather and climate.
Weather refers to the day-to-day conditions, temperature, rainfall, humidity, and more, that we experience locally.
Climate is the long-term average of these conditions, measured over seasons, years, or even decades, across regions or globally.
Florida, for example, has a wet season and a dry season, but rainfall within those periods can vary greatly from day to day. While climate patterns help us anticipate seasonal trends, the unpredictability of weather events, like sudden frosts or heat spikes, creates challenges for gardeners. Understanding this distinction helps residents prepare for short-term weather swings while adapting to long-term climate shifts.
Adapting for Resilience
Climate change is no longer a distant concept; it’s a daily reality for North Florida gardeners. To adapt, communities must embrace:
Education programs on cold protection and plant selection.
Affordable protective solutions like frost cloths and portable covers.
Resilient landscaping strategies, including native plants better suited to fluctuating conditions.
Spanish bayonet plants growing on the back side of a dune at Grayton Beach State Park. Photo credit: Carrie Stevenson, UF IFAS Extension
When you think of self-defense in the natural world, it’s normal to lean towards the animal kingdom. Between their intimidating teeth, claws, horns, and venom, animals can hold their own in a physical battle for dominance or survival.
But plants are no slouch in this department, either. In the book, “Wicked Plants: The Weed that Killed Lincoln’s Mother & Other Botanical Atrocities,” the author discusses no fewer than 200 plants with deadly poisonous properties. Many plants have also evolved spines and thorns, rash-inducing toxins, and thick bark or waxy coatings that keep disease, water, and anything attempting to feed on them out.
The sharp spines of yucca plants serve as self-defense, but can also be used for making tools. Photo credit: Carrie Stevenson, UF IFAS Extension
Yucca plants display several examples of vegetative self-defense. Even the common names of several Florida species; Adam’s needle, Spanish dagger, and Spanish bayonet, signal their obvious danger. They are native to deserts and desert-like conditions, including the dry, sandy dunes of Florida beaches. Dry habitats lend themselves to tough plants, as they adapt thick leaves to keep water in and needles or thorns to collect and condense water and ward off herbivores that might seek their stored water resources. Yucca are of course highly salt and drought tolerant, so they make great landscape plants for coastal properties.
Brown seed pods visible on a yucca plant in the fall. Photo credit: Carrie Stevenson, UF IFAS Extension
Spanish bayonet, one of several species common to Florida, is so intimidating that I regularly see homeowners plant it under windows as a burglary deterrent. Its leaves taper into a stiff and potentially painful point. If you look around online, there are numerous instructional videos and articles from survivalist or “bushcraft” enthusiasts explaining how to strip the leaves, leaving only the point and several fibers for a DIY needle and thread. This technique has been passed down for generations and is useful for building and repairing shelters or clothing. The tough filamentous fibers were used for weaving blankets and baskets.
The bell-shaped flowers are highly attractive to butterflies, and also edible for humans (although be careful, some people report itchy reactions). After spring blooming, brown seed pods will remain on the upright stalks through the fall.
A spectacular array of blazing star in bloom. Photo credit: Troy Springer, Florida Wildflower Foundation
Walking through a northwest Florida wildflower prairie in autumn, the star of the show is Liatris. Known as dense gayfeather or blazing star, this tall (up to 7’!) stunner of a plant is covered up with clusters of small purple flowers. The flowers are are composed of tiny, frilly five-petaled florets. Each cluster may have groups of up to 18 flowers at a time, crowding the stalk with color.
Migrating monarchs feed on blazing star in late fall. Photo credit: Whitney Scheffel
Before blooming, the spiky grasslike structure grows upright and produces a series of dozens of green leaflets, similar in form to rosemary.
While delicate in appearance, the blazing star is a hardy plant adapted to a wide range of habitats. Some varieties can grow in the pure sand of beach dunes and scrub, while Liatris spicata thrives in the soggy wet soils of bogs and pine flatwoods. The species is known for attracting bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds, so it makes a great addition to a pollinator garden. The flowers perform best in full sun.
Side-by-side, the bottlebrush-like blazing star plant before and after blooming. Photo credit: Carrie Stevenson, UF IFAS Extension
Blazing star is particularly impressive in a large group, so you can plant dozens together (by seed or container) for a beautiful effect. After blooming deep purple this time of year, they’ll turn a goldish bronze that adds to the interesting fall color of a garden. Liatris will also re-seed every year after dying back in the winter.
There are many plants native to the United States known commonly as colic root, including blazing star. This nickname arose from its traditional medicinal use treating stomach cramps. Additional uses of a tea made from the plant were used for everything from sore throats and kidney issues, while an incense made from dried roots was burned for sinus relief.
A view of the recently completed UWF Heritage Roots Garden. Photo credit: Mike Thomin, Florida Public Archaeology Network
Just about a year ago, a dream team of history and plant nerds assembled around a common goal. The idea was to transform an open, weedy space adjacent to the University of West Florida (UWF) Archaeology Institute into a lush garden. The garden would be unique, however, in its purpose; to showcase native plants important to the wide swath of humanity that has made northwest Florida home for centuries. The plants featured here were to be planted deliberately, demonstrating how human relationships with vegetation over time have made the area habitable.
This sign describing the edible, medicinal, and building uses of Black-eyed Susan plants is typical of the educational information at the garden. Photo credit: Mike Thomin, Florida Public Archeology Network.
If you walk on the site today, that idea and initial sketches have been made reality. Concentric circles of gravel, mulch, and grass form the shape of a gopher tortoise shell. The tortoise has spiritual significance to members of the local Muscogee tribe and ecological importance as a keystone species. Within the planted space are native groundcovers, shrubs, and trees that have long provided food, traditional medicine, building materials, and dyes and textiles for clothing. This flora makes human life tolerable in a hot, rainy, often difficult environment.
Locally brewed yaupon tea was served as part of the opening ceremony for the garden. Photo credit: Mike Thomin, Florida Public Archaeology Network.
Illustrated signage designed for the site explains ethnobotanical principles, highlighting the relationship that people have had with fifteen plants as they provided healing, nourishment, or protection over the years. The plants are identified on signage in Latin binomial, English common names, and Muscogee language. At the center of the garden is a gravel rectangular space, highlighted by a large piece of local iron rock that represents the tribal Sacred Fire.
One featured plant includes the yaupon holly (Ilex vomitoria), whose leaves are brewed as a highly caffeinated tea. The tea is used ceremonially by many southeastern American Indian tribes, and was popular with early American settlers when tea was difficult to import. Yaupon tea is experiencing a bit of a popular resurgence, with commercial products readily available now. Known as the “black drink,” we all drank a cup of the tasty beverage as part of the open house and ceremonial blessing of the garden a few weeks ago.
Chief Dan Helms of the Santa Rosa Band of the Lower Muscogee tribe blesses the UWF Heritage Garden. Photo credit: Mike Thomin, Florida Public Archaeology Network.
The design team developed a scavenger hunt for youth visitors and is working on a self-guided tour to educate the public about native plants, their cultural heritage, and their role in supporting a healthy watershed. The garden is open to the public during daytime hours, and located near the entrance to UWF at the eastern corner of University Parkway and Campus Drive.
Habitat, whether for wildlife or people, relies on the provision of food, water, shelter, and space. All these needs are met within the UWF Heritage Roots Garden. We hope that visitors will develop a deeper appreciation of the region’s historical and ecological legacy, strengthening modern cultural connections with the past. We hope to tie in the Heritage Garden to other UWF campus garden spaces, including the Edward Ball Nature Trail and the UWF Community Garden.
Many gardeners enjoy plants that attract butterflies and there is no shortage of beautiful flowering plants to supply nectar for all our pollinators. One critical part of making habitat for butterflies that we may need to improve upon is supplying plenty of host plants for butterfly development. While we enjoy the flight of a butterfly through our garden, we really want to offer features that keeps them around.
Your landscape likely includes a few host plants and maybe you even have a citrus tree or plant parsley every season. What many people don’t realize is how many native trees serve as host plants for butterflies. Some of these plants like specific environments while others can grow in a wide variety of habitats.
The Black cherry (Prunus serotina) and Cherry laurel (Prunus caroliniana) serve as host to a large number of butterflies. A more well know species that uses the native cherries for development is the Tiger swallowtail. Although we might consider these trees weedy, they can serve as hosts to hundreds of species of butterflies and moths along with providing berries for wildlife. The black cherry will be deciduous while the cherry laurel is evergreen. Both have flowers in late winter or early spring. Just be aware that the cherry laurel fruit can have some toxicity in different developmental stages.
Yellow form of the Tiger Swallowtail. Some females can also have mostly black coloration to prevent predation. Photo: Beth Bolles, UF IFAS Extension Escambia County.
The Winged elm (Ulmus alata) is gaining in popularity as a landscape tree. The Question mark butterfly will lay eggs on plants under the elm and then caterpillars crawl up to feed on elm leaves. The reason we don’t see this butterfly on flowers as much is that it also feeds on manures, carrion, and rotting fruit. Resting butterflies have wing patterns that make them look like leaves.
If you have a site with moist soil or can supply routine moisture, consider the Sweet bay magnolia (Magnolia virginiana). It will attract the Tiger, Palamedes, and Spicebush swallowtails for development. Flowers on the tree are not as large as those on Southern magnolia but you still have similar appearance and even a pleasant fragrance.
Palamedes swallowtail butterfly feeding on a porterweed. Photo by Beth Bolles, UF IFAS Extension Escambia County.
A couple of understory trees are the Pawpaw (Asimina triloba) and Sparkleberry (Vaccinium arboreum). Look for the Zebra swallowtail to find the Pawpaw while the sparkleberry will serve as host to hairstreak butterflies.
Pawpaw also offers delicious fruit. Photo by Beth Bolles, UF IFAS Extension Escambia County.
Even though landscapes may have limited spaces for every host plant, we can preserve some spaces around borders for native trees. These plants will make a positive impact for butterflies and pollinators.
Sunflowers, Helianthus spp., are a great choice for gardeners who are looking for some cheerful color in their landscape. Here in Florida, we have the main ingredient for success, lots of sunshine!
Skyscraper Sunflower. Credit: Ray Bodrey, UF/IFAS Extension.
Sunflowers are short-lived annuals. A good average time between planting and bloom is roughly 65 days. You can typically plant sunflowers in Florida beginning in late winter until early fall. Only the coldest months are the issue, and for most years that’s only a couple of months for us. Sunflowers can be planted almost anywhere there is full sun. The major selling point to plant sunflowers is of course the impressive blooms (figure 1). These yellow to sometimes orange or red petaled flowers develop a central seed disc, with most varieties having approximately an 8” diameter in growth.
Skyscraper sunflowers planted in close pattern. Credit: Ray Bodrey, UF/IFAS Extension.
As for planting, you may choose to plant narrow rows and close seed spacing in order to cull less preforming plants later. A final row and seed spacing of 2’-3’ is recommended for full height and development of most varieties. However, you may choose to plant in a bed, using a close pattern as seen in figure 2. In any event, sunflowers are easy to propagate by seed and are very low maintenance. However, powdery mildew and spittle bugs can be a nuisance. A general garden fungicide and insecticide will help if problems occur.
Sunflowers, Helianthus spp. Credit: Ray Bodrey, UF/IFAS Extension.
Sunflowers are available in many varieties, which consists of different color blooms and plant sizes. These sizes range from dwarf (1’-3’) to tall (10’-15’) varieties (figure 2). You may wish to stake taller varieties at some point, as some plants will tend to lean with no wind break in place. Here’s a few gardening variety common names to look for: sunbright, sonja, sunrich lemon or orange and autumn beauty. Seed companies also have mixes available in packets. For tall plants, mammoth or skyscraper varieties exist.
Beach sunflower. Credit: Ralph Mitchell, UF/IFAS Extension.
If you are fond of the sunflower bloom and looking for a groundcover, there are a couple of native perennials that fit this category. Beach sunflower, Helianthus debilis or swamp sunflower, Helianthus angustifolius, are groundcovers/ornamentals for landscapes and thrive in dry, hot climates and in a range of soil types. They also are great pollinator attractors.
For more information, contact your local county extension office. Happy Gardening!
