A garden path. Photo Credit: Donna Arnold FAMU Extension.
The Florida Panhandle offers an unusually rich setting for turning everyday yards into expressive outdoor galleries. Its mix of native plants, shifting seasons, and strong regional identity gives homeowners the raw materials to create landscapes that function as living works of art. Some gardeners refer to this blending of creativity and horticulture as “Art in the Garden,” and a few local educators have even playfully called it “gARTening,” a term used informally to describe gardening as a creative art form.
Plants as Living Sculpture
Northwest Florida’s plant palette naturally lends itself to expressive, almost artistic landscaping. Many native plants have strong shapes, gentle textures, and seasonal movement that feel like living sculpture. Bold, structural species such as yucca and saw palmetto create silhouettes that give a space its backbone. Grasses like muhly and bluestem bring softness and motion, catching light differently as the day shifts. Vines such as passionflower or coral honeysuckle can be guided along trellises or fences, forming patterns that read like woven artwork.
Thoughtful choices grouping plants in clusters, repeating shapes, or pairing contrasting forms let these species act almost like brushstrokes. They build rhythm, guide the eye, and create a sense of flow while also supporting the region’s ecology
Structure as a Frame for Nature
A bottle tree. Photo Credit: Donna Arnold. FAMU Extension
Built elements help define the “gallery” and give plantings a sense of intention. In the Panhandle’s climate, materials that weather gracefully and withstand heat, humidity, and storms are especially valuable.
Arbors and arches made from cedar or reclaimed wood can support native climbers and create natural entry points.
Stone, brick, or repurposed materials add grounding and texture while blending with the region’s rustic coastal and woodland character.
Containers and raised platforms allow gardeners to curate small, themed display mini exhibits that highlight color, form, or seasonal change. These structures act as frames, guiding the eye and giving the garden a sense of composition
Color and Mood in the Landscape
A mixed flower bed. Photo Credit: Donna Arnold. FAMU Extension.
Color theory applies outdoors just as it does on canvas. The Panhandle’s long growing season makes it possible to build color stories that evolve month by month.
Contrasts in leaf size, texture, and bloom shape add depth and visual rhythm even when flowers aren’t present.
By choosing plants with overlapping bloom times or dramatic seasonal shifts, homeowners can create a garden that feels alive and expressive year‑round. https://ask.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/ep451
Personal and Cultural Expression
Art in the garden becomes most meaningful when it reflects the people who tend it blending local heritage with personal creativity.
Handmade mosaics, pottery, or sculptural accents can be tucked into beds or used as focal points.
Patterns inspired by regional history quilting motifs, coastal shapes, or agricultural symbols can be echoed in pathways or planting layouts.
Native plants with cultural significance help tell stories about Florida’s natural and human history.
A Florida torreya tree. Photo Credit: Donna Arnold. FAMU Extension
A Landscape That Lives and Changes
A garden designed as art is never static. Plants grow, storms reshape, seasons shift, and new ideas emerge. This constant evolution is part of the beauty. In the Florida Panhandle where nature is vibrant, resilient, and expressive homeowners have an ideal environment for creating landscapes that feel alive in every sense . For more information contact your local Extension Office.
As cooler weather settles across the Florida Panhandle, many homeowners refresh their landscape beds with plants that provide vibrant seasonal color. Ornamental kale (Brassica oleracea var. acephala) and ornamental cabbage are reliable, eye-catching choices for fall and winter landscapes. Their ruffled foliage and colorful rosettes, ranging from deep purple and rose to creamy white deliver long-lasting visual interest throughout the coldest months, even after many other seasonal plants have faded.
Photo Credit: Donna Arnold. FAMU Extension
Why Choose Ornamental Kale & Cabbage?
Unlike flowering annuals, ornamental kale and cabbage provide colorful foliage rather than blooms. Their dramatic rosette shapes create strong focal points in landscape beds, containers, and entryway plantings. These cool‑season ornamentals thrive in the Panhandle’s mild winter temperatures and tolerate light frost, making them dependable choices for winter interest.
Planting & Care Tips
Planting Time: October through December for best cool‑season results.
Sunlight: Full sun brings out the richest pigmentation in the leaves.
Soil: Moist, well‑drained soil with added compost.
Spacing: 12–18 inches apart to allow the rosettes to fully develop.
Maintenance: Water consistently but avoid soggy soil; remove yellowing leaves; fertilize lightly.
Their care needs are minimal, making them ideal additions for busy homeowners seeking low‑effort winter color.
To Eat or Not to Eat?
Although ornamental kale and cabbage are edible, they are grown primarily for their appearance rather than flavor. Their leaves are typically tougher and more bitter than those of culinary varieties. While cooking can help soften the texture and reduce bitterness, most homeowners choose to enjoy these plants as decorative landscape features rather than as part of a meal.
Design Ideas for Winter Color
Photo Credit: Donna Arnold. FAMU Extension
Create eye‑catching combinations by pairing ornamental kale and cabbage with pansies, violas, and snapdragons. Pansies and violas add cheerful pops of color that blend beautifully with the textured rosettes. Snapdragons provide vertical accents that balance the low, rounded form of the cabbages. These combinations work well in mixed beds, large containers, or along entryways where color can be appreciated up close. For striking displays, try pairing purple kale with yellow pansies or white cabbage with deep blue violas. These pairings brighten winter landscapes and bring life back to garden spaces during the cooler months.
Pest & Disease Snapshot
Ornamental kale and cabbage are generally hardy but can be affected by a few common pests and diseases during the cool season. Aphids, caterpillars, and cabbage loopers may feed on foliage, causing visible holes and damage. In humid conditions or areas with poor air circulation, fungal diseases such as powdery or downy mildew may develop.
Prevent problems by practicing good garden sanitation, spacing plants to improve airflow, and avoiding overhead watering. UF/IFAS recommends using Integrated Pest Management (IPM) strategies, including hand-removal of pests, encouraging beneficial insects, and applying control measures only when needed to keep plants healthy throughout the season.
With the holiday season fast approaching, many folks are reaching for store-bought decorations. But what if your yard could supply some of the festiveness this season? You can turn your landscape trimmings into creative DIY ideas, turning what some might consider waste into holiday charm while being kind to the environment.
Going the more natural route for holiday décor aligns with one of our Florida-Friendly Landscaping™ Principles #7: Recycle Yard Waste. Some items you may already have or can collect from your yard can make great decorations such as evergreen branches like pines or cedars, pinecones, acorns, dried leaves, twigs, herbs, old tree limbs, and much more. Utilizing what you have to bring holiday cheer to your home can also help minimize single-use plastics or mass-produced items. If created properly and depending on the item, you may be able to reuse what you create for multiple holiday seasons.
MGVs utilizing grape vines and tree clippings to make beautiful wreaths. Photo by Abbey Smith, UF/IFAS Extension
Evergreen trimmings are some of the easiest things from your yard to re-purpose if you have access to them. You can make wreaths, mantle decorations, and even beautiful bouquets. To make a wreath base, utilizing dried muscadine grape vine makes the process a lot easier. You can add your trimmings once the vine base has been assembled. For table or mantle pieces, you can utilize a mix of evergreen branches, pine cones, and few bundles of tree trimmings of your choice. Herbs, pinecones, and certain seed pods can also add some holiday aroma to your home by emitting their natural scent. For decorating outside, consider using thicker trimmings or logs.
We’ve discussed how you can utilize you yard-waste for holiday décor, but how do you collect the materials? You can first start by surveying your yard looking for fallen branches, pinecones, etc. When you’ve made a collection, prune and inspect for any broken, diseased materials and shake off loose debris or insects to ensure what you’re utilizing is clean for indoor use. For indoor use materials, possible rinsing with water and allowing them to dry before you take the material inside can be helpful. After the holidays are over, you can turn your green materials back into nature if possible or make additions to your compost pile.
Holiday citrus wreath displayed on a fence in front of a home. Holiday wreaths, citrus fruit, oranges, lemons, picket fence. UF/IFAS Photo: Tyler Jones.
Going green this holiday season can be simple. Using what’s on hand or growing nearby reduces the need to purchase new decorations. Decorative materials like glitter or plastic tinsel often contribute to high waste volumes during the holidays. Combat this by avoiding plastics and microplastics. If you use real trees or large trimmings, know how your local yard-waste or recycling system handles them. For example, many municipalities mulch Christmas trees picked up at curbside. Creating DIY projects is a great way to involve the whole family, so use your kids to help scout your lawn for those hidden gems.
By tapping into what your yard already offers, you’ll not only create memorable, natural holiday décor but also do your landscaping and planet a favor. Sustainability doesn’t mean skimping on style– it means thoughtful choices, repurposing what you have, and wrapping the season in green (literally).
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.
All gardeners dream of the perfect plant that requires no maintenance, comes back every year, and remains strikingly beautiful nearly year-round. There is one such plant in my landscape that I never have to fuss over and always looks the part. One plant stands unflinching through summer heat or winter cold. One plant is never fazed by excessive rainfall or parching drought. One plant remains unbothered by pesky insects or disease. That plant is Purple Heart (Tradescantia pallida ‘Purpurea’) and it will always have a place in my garden.
Purple Heart is a tender perennial groundcover native to tropical Mexico and, as its name might imply, purple is the primary hue the species adds to landscapes. A true all-round performer, Purple Heart offers stunning purple foliage and small purplish-pink, pollinator-attracting flowers from spring green up to the first killing frost. In some mild winters, Purple Heart even behaves as an evergreen in the Panhandle!
Purple Heart planting in July. Photo courtesy of Daniel Leonard.
Since attractive foliage is the primary draw with Purple Heart, siting it to maximize leaf color is important. For the deepest, most vivid shades of purple, plant in full sun; 6 or more hours of direct sunlight is ideal. Also, like many tropical plants, Purple Heart will look its best with ample moisture but, once established, is among the most drought tolerant options for Panhandle landscapes. I’ve found my Purple Heart stands look their best with occasional watering during extremely hot, dry periods, but other than that, they thrive on rainfall alone.
If there is a drawback to the species, it might be a little too vigorous and easy to grow. Because plantings can rapidly grow and expand, rooting along stems as it goes, Purple Heart can sometimes become weedy in landscapes. In my experience, Purple Heart plays nicely in the landscape with other perennials and isn’t aggressive to the point of choking out its neighbors. However, if you desire an extremely neat and orderly landscape, Purple Heart’s freewheeling nature might best be used as a spiller plant in large containers or planted in an area confined by hardscape features.
If you decide to color your landscape purple with Purple Heart, plants can be found for sale at nearly any garden center or nursery and are extremely easily propagated, making it a popular passalong plant – chances are you might know someone who would willingly share a cutting (or three) with you. For more information on this popular purple perennial or any other horticultural topic, contact your local UF/IFAS Extension county office. Happy gardening!
Before my career in Extension, I spent ten years selling plants. I worked at a 40-acre nursery that was filled with thousands of plants. The selection was enormous and it was an eye-opening experience, even for a horticulturalist, to see how many different types of the same plant species were on the market. I learned quickly that if someone came in and said, “I need a daylily,” “I need a hydrangea,” or “I need a loropetalum” there were a lot more questions that needed to be asked to help them properly!
Plant breeders in ornamental horticulture spend their careers selecting plants for winning features that gardeners will line up to buy. Examples of traits include flower color, repeat flowering, mature size, disease resistance, cold hardiness, sun/shade tolerance, and foliage color. There are a lot of steps between recognizing what might be a superstar and availability in your local garden center, but let’s just jump to the part where they are in the garden center.
When shopping for plants, always look for the full name of the plant, preferably the botanical name which will include genus and species in Latin. Some plants are grown from seed and may have some variation in features. For example, a live oak grown from an acorn will be named with only genus and species, Quercus virginiana. The mature growth habit will have a wider range than one that was cultivated from a parent plant with known features. The species could be smaller than average, larger than average, an interesting branching feature, etc. Think of your own family, kids from the same parents may have different eye color, hair color, and height but they are all human children!
A cultivated plant is grown from cuttings or similar propagation methods that create a genetic clone of the originally selected plant. It is considered a cultivar if it will not grow true from seed and needs human intervention to result in the identical characteristics as the parent plant. The botanical name of a cultivated plant will follow the italicized species and is written/typed in single quotes. Note, since many plants are trademarked, there may be a botanical name that isn’t very flashy followed by a similar name, with some marketing flair. Let’s look at a couple of examples:
Pictured here is Emerald Snow and Purple Pixie Loropetalums. Their foliage color and sizes are very different.
Loropetalum chinense ‘Shang-white’ PP21738 is the official botanical name for Emerald Snow® Semi-dwarf Loropetalum. Emerald Snow® is a green-leaf, white flower semi-dwarf loropetalum that will reach 4-6’ tall by 3-5’ wide.
Loropetalum chinense ‘Peack’ PP18441 sold commercially as Purple Pixie® Dwarf Weeping Loropetalum has red foliage, pink flowers, and matures at 1-2’ tall by 3-4’ wide.
As you can see, just asking for a Loropetalum can result in vastly different plants!
Relying on common names only can also lead to an unintentional purchase. The same common name may be used for two very different plants. Another issue is that closely related species may have different places of origin and if you are trying to use only Florida native plants that could impact your design plans. Here are a couple of examples:
Mock orange may refer to deciduous weeping shrub with white flowers that performs well in cold climates, Philadelphus coronarius, or an evergreen shrub that is only hardy to Zone 8a, Pittosporum tobira.
Beautyberry can be native to Florida or other areas of the world. Callicarpa americana is native to North America, including Florida. Callicarpa japonica is native to China and East Asia.
The takeaway message is always look for botanical names and do a little homework when purchasing plants. Ensure the plant you are looking at has the features that match your landscape needs!
