by Donna Arnold | Dec 11, 2025
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.
For further reading on climate impacts and gardening adaptation in Florida, see: Cold Protection for North Florida | UF/IFAS Extension; Climate Change and Florida’s Native Plants – Florida Wildflower Foundation; Surviving Winter Storms: Smart Gardening; Frost in the Panhandle? Practical Tips for Protecting Your Garden | Gardening in the Panhandle Practices for Northern Florida Gardens
by Molly Jameson | Dec 11, 2025
Parsley establishes well in late fall and provides steady harvests throughout the winter. Photo by Molly Jameson.
Cool Season Annual Herbs to Plant in December
Cool-season cilantro grows quickly in mild weather and benefits from regular harvesting. Photo by Molly Jameson.
Winter might seem like the quiet season in the garden, but for cool-season herbs, it’s the time they settle in and really show off. While tomatoes and peppers and other warm-season crops may have succumbed to our first cold snaps, many herbs absolutely love the mild, bright, chilly weather we get from December through early spring.
If you’re itching to plant something right now, annual herbs are one of the easiest ways to keep the garden feeling lively through the colder months.
Cilantro (Coriandrum sativum)
Cilantro is one of the most reliable herbs you can grow in winter. It thrives in cool temperatures and short days, which makes December an excellent time to plant. You can scatter the seeds directly into containers or a raised bed, thin seedlings to six to eight inches apart, and harvest regularly to keep them producing.
Once warmer days return, cilantro will bolt and complete its life cycle, but that’s not always a bad thing. If you let the plants go to seed, the little green fruits ripen into the familiar brown coriander seeds. They’re useful in the kitchen, and you can save a handful to start next year’s crop.
Parsley (Petroselinum crispum)
Parsley is technically a biennial, but here in Florida, we treat it as a winter annual. Plant it in late fall and it usually settles in without much complaint, producing a steady mound of leaves you can snip all season. Flat-leaf parsley tends to have stronger flavor, while curly parsley is often used as a garnish, though both types are perfectly good in salads, sauces, and soups.
Dill produces umbrella-shaped clusters of tiny yellow flowers that attract pollinators. Photo by Irina Khomenko, Adobe Stock.
Give parsley sun or light shade and soil that doesn’t dry out too quickly. By the time the weather starts warming again, it naturally shifts its energy toward flowering, which signals the end of its leafy season.
Dill (Anethum graveolens)
Dill is one of those herbs you can spot from across the garden thanks to its fine, feathery texture. The scent alone makes it worth growing. The leaves, stems, and seeds all bring that familiar dill flavor to roasted vegetables, yogurt dips, potatoes, and seafood. The plants can stretch surprisingly tall if they’re happy, especially once the yellow flower heads start forming seeds.
And as long as the weather stays cool, dill usually keeps right on going. Give it a sunny spot with well-drained soil, and you’ll be harvesting for months. Like parsley and fennel, it also draws black swallowtail caterpillars. Many gardeners plant a little extra simply because the payoff – a few bright swallowtails drifting through the garden – is worth sharing.
Borage produces edible leaves and flowers throughout the winter. Photo by Molly Jameson.
Borage (Borago officinalis)
Borage isn’t as widely grown as some of the other herbs here, but it’s one of the more charming additions to a winter bed. The leaves have a faint cucumber scent, and the blue, star-shaped flowers look like something out of a fairytale. Both are edible, and the flowers especially tend to disappear quickly into salads or iced drinks once you start using them. Bees seem to find borage immediately, even on cool days, and it often reseeds itself in the same spot for years.
It doesn’t ask for much – sun, a bit of space, and soil that drains reasonably well. Coming from the Mediterranean, it handles dry weather and even deer browsing better than many soft-leaved herbs.
Chervil (Anthriscus cerefolium)
Chervil, sometimes called French parsley, is a delicate, ferny herb with a mild anise flavor that’s perfect for winter cooking. It’s one of those herbs you want to use fresh – just toss a handful in at the end of cooking and it melts right into whatever you’re making. A few specialty forms even produce edible roots similar to small carrots, though the leafy types are what you’ll most often see.
Chervil’s delicate, fern-like leaves thrive in cool weather. Photo by Jiri D., Adobe Stock.
Chervil grows best in full to part sun with rich, moist soil, and it handles cold weather well. Warm temperatures, however, will quickly cause it to bolt and turn bitter, so winter is the ideal window for growing it here.
Lavender (Lavandula spp.)
Lavender always seems to lend a sense of calm to a garden. Most of us know it for the soothing scent used in soaps, lotions, and oils, but it’s also showing up more often in the kitchen. A tiny pinch can add a gentle floral note to pastries, syrups, jams, or a cup of tea.
Because it evolved in the dry hills of the western Mediterranean, lavender appreciates our winter weather far more than our humid summers. Spanish and French types generally handle our climate better than the classic English lavender, but be sure to give it the right conditions, including full sun, well-drained soil, and good air movement.
Spanish lavender blooms during Florida’s cool season and pairs well with rosemary in the kitchen. Photo by Molly Jameson.
Water lavender lightly as it settles in, then let the soil dry between waterings. Once established, it is one of those plants you end up brushing against every time you pass it, simply to enjoy the fragrance.
Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare)
Fennel is both ornamental and practical. The feathery foliage brings a soft, airy look to winter beds, and the flavor of the fronds works beautifully with citrus, fish, or hearty winter salads. If you let fennel grow tall, it eventually produces large umbrella-shaped flower clusters that draw in pollinators and later ripen into seeds you can use in the kitchen.
Most gardeners grow the non-bulbing type for its foliage, though bulb fennel can be planted in early winter if you want to experiment. Like dill and parsley, fennel is a host plant for black swallowtail caterpillars, so it’s worth planting extra if you enjoy watching the full butterfly life cycle. Fennel grows best in full sun with well-drained soil.
Growing Tips for Winter Herbs
Fennel grows well in the cool months, producing feathery foliage and sweet, anise-flavored fronds. Photo by Molly Jameson.
Our winter sun is gentle enough that most herbs appreciate as much light as you can give them. Containers and raised beds work well because they drain quickly, which is important for almost all cool-season herbs. Keep soil evenly moist, and on nights with hard freezes (less than 28°F for over an hour), a light sheet or frost cloth over young plants offers protection. Most of these herbs will rebound quickly after brief cold snaps.
Cool-season herbs are some of the easiest plants you can grow this time of year. They’re fast, flavorful, and usually much less bothered by pests or disease than anything you grow in summer.
A few pots of cilantro, parsley, dill, borage, chervil, lavender, or fennel can brighten up both your meals and your garden all the way to spring.
by Daniel J. Leonard | Dec 4, 2025
My previous article outlined the benefits of planting trees during the winter dormant season. Once planted, it’s then time to implement one of the best practices that helps ensure successful establishment of recently installed trees and shrubs – mulching.
Mulching, by definition, is simply the process of adding a layer of material over the top of the soil. Like planting at the right time, mulching does many great things for your landscape. Mulching helps moderate temperatures; the soil stays warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer. Mulching increases water retention; when the sun isn’t blasting directly onto the soil, it dries out much more slowly. Mulching reduces weed pressure; most weed seeds require sunlight to germinate. Etc. Etc. The benefits of mulch abound. But what material you use and how you apply mulch figure heavily into whether your mulch helps or harms the plants whose roots it lies over.
Pine bark mulch applied correctly in a landscape. Photo courtesy of Daniel Leonard.
There are two basic options when considering mulch: organic or inorganic sources. In general, you should always select an organic mulch that is derived from local sources. Organic mulches are mulches derived from natural materials like pine straw, leaves, tree bark, or shredded wood chips. These mulches break down over time and benefit soil health through bettering water holding capacity, increasing soil porosity and organic matter content, and drastically expanding the soil biome (beneficial worms, fungus, and bacteria that live in the soil). Organic mulches also allow landscapes to blend in with the natural areas surrounding homesites as they typically use materials found in local ecosystems. For example, in the coastal south, pine forests dominate, pine straw is plentiful, and purchasing usually supports local businesses that grow, harvest, and market the straw. So, unless you happen to live in a desert environment where rocks are natural, steer clear of rocks or other inorganic mulches.
Pinestraw mulch applied around a newly planted tree. Photo courtesy of Daniel Leonard.
As with most things, there is a Goldilocks zone for mulch. Too little isn’t enough to keep weeds from easily poking through and soil from quickly drying. Too much and you risk depriving plant roots from oxygen exchange with air above, trapping too much moisture and causing rot issues, or even creating a hydrophobic layer of dried mulch that repels rainfall and irrigation. Instead, just the right amount of mulch should be applied, enough to create a 2-3” layer of helpful mulch. With some mulches like straw, this may mean applying a 6-8” layer that will settle down to the magic 2-3” number with a good rain, interlocking the individual pieces of straw. With others like wood chips or bark nuggets, there will be little settling, and the applied amount should be 2-3” deep. A final tip is to always pull mulch back a little from the crowns of plants and the trunks of woody trees and shrubs to prevent potential disease issues.
So, after you install your new landscape plants this winter, remember to mulch well. Be sure to select an organic mulch that supports local industries, enhances the soil in your landscapes, protects your plants’ roots, prevents weeds, and looks natural! For more information about mulch or any other horticultural topic, contact your local UF/IFAS County Extension Office. Happy Gardening!
by Lauren Goldsby | Dec 4, 2025
Agriculture is not the first thing that comes to mind when you’re in Bay County, especially when you’re enjoying a day at the beach! In the 2022 Census of Agriculture, 139 farms were reported, covering more than 70,324 acres. Much of what’s counted as farmland in Bay County is forested land managed for timber rather than traditional row-crop agriculture. Other commodities include hay, berries, livestock, honey and aquaculture. Together, agricultural sales generated $3.69 million dollars in 2022. Agriculture exists here, but it is not the primary economic driver. Tourism plays a much larger role, bringing $3.1 billion in visitor spending and supporting over 35,000 jobs.
This can be a common in areas where there is a large amount of tourism. Both systems depend on healthy natural resources, for different but equally important reasons. This is especially true when it comes to water, which makes up 27% of the county by area. Large scale producers use Best Management Practices (BMPs) to reduce the amount of chemical and nutrient runoff into our water systems.
If an area does not have a lot of agriculture does that mean we are safe from pollution in our water? No. Runoff isn’t just a problem in agricultural systems. A single lawn may not contribute much on its own, but when you add them up they can become a significant source of water pollution.
One of the easiest ways you can reduce impacts on our water resources is with how you fertilize your lawns. Here are some residential BMPs you can follow in your own yard. If you are fertilizing next to a body of water, leave a 10-foot strip unfertilized on the water’s edge. Don’t apply more than 1 pound of slow release nitrogen per 1,000 square feet at a time or exceed 4 pounds per 1,000 square feet per year. If you are using a quick release nitrogen do not apply more than ½ pound at one time for the same area. This chart below can be used to calculate how much fertilizer that is based on the percent of nitrogen. Nitrogen is always the first number, followed by phosphorus and potassium. Remember that right now your lawn doesn’t need any fertilizer. Dormancy is a protection from winter freezes, and fertilizer put out now will not be taken up effectively by dormant grass.
| Nitrogen percent in fertilizer |
Pounds of fertilizer to apply 1lb of nitrogen / 1000 sqft |
| 5% |
20 lbs |
| 10% (10-10-10) |
10 lbs |
| 20% |
5 lbs |
U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service. (2022). 2022 Census of Agriculture, Bay County, Florida. https://quickstats.nass.usda.gov/
Bay County Chamber of Commerce. (2025). Business & community profile. https://panamacity.org/tourism-business/
by Daniel J. Leonard | Nov 26, 2025
With cold temperatures having arrived in the Panhandle last week, we’re finally getting close to prime landscape planting season. But why is winter the best time to install landscape trees and shrubs? Shouldn’t we plant when things are leafed out and growing? While it’s counterintuitive to think bitter cold, dreary days are significantly better to plant landscape plants in than the warm, sunny days of summer, it’s usually true! Let’s explore why winter is the time to plant woody trees and shrubs and then look at some of the best woody plants no Panhandle landscape should be without.
Most people from elsewhere think that Florida is always lush, green, and tropical. Those people have clearly never been to the Panhandle – heck it snowed last year! Our region of Florida has more in common, climate wise, with the rest of the south – subtropical with long hot, humid summers and wet, mild winters (though rain has been hard to come by recently), occasionally wracked by intense cold fronts. Because of those cold fronts, tropical plants cannot survive, and woody plants enter a dormant stage where above ground growth ceases. This cold-forced dormant season is the perfect time to plant woody plants because the planting process is stressful (the root system is purposefully damaged to remove circling and J-shaped roots and encourage outward growth) and regular rainfall and cool temps means conditions are right for plants to get a solid root system re-established before growth and transpiration begins in the heat of spring/summer.
Now that you know why we plant woody landscape plants when we do, let’s select a few quintessential, versatile Florida-Friendly trees and shrubs (2 each, one native and one non-native) to install in our landscapes this planting season.
Nuttall Oak (Quercus texana) is one of the most adaptable landscape trees around. The species is tolerant of many soil types, native to moist bottomland areas but tolerating drier spots well once established. While it’s a large tree – up to 70-80’ tall, I find its rounded upright habit to often be more in scale with landscapes than the wide spreading Live Oak (Quercus virginiana). Nuttall Oak certainly has many positive attributes (tough, wind-resistant, pollinator friendly, etc), but its fall color is probably my favorite. For the Panhandle it is quite good, delivering autumnal hues of red and orange.
It’s not North Carolina Sugar Maple color but Nuttall Oak possesses attractive foliage. Photo courtesy of Daniel Leonard.
Crape Myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica) is the most widely grown landscape tree in the South for good reason! They’re tough, widely adapted, offer excellent summertime flower displays, and possess interesting architecture and unique bark. The primary consideration with Crape Myrtle is simply picking the right one. Do you need an upright, compact tree? Choose ‘Sioux’ or ‘Apalachee’. Do you want a big crape that can double as a small shade tree? Choose ‘Natchez’ or ‘Muskogee’. Do you want a new dwarf variety or one with black foliage? There’s now plenty of those to choose from as well. There’s truly a Crape Myrtle for every yard.
Oakleaf Hydrangea (Hydrangea quercifolia) is a wonderful native flowering deciduous shrub that’s at home in all Panhandle landscapes. It prefers moist soil with a little afternoon shade but can tolerate most conditions thrown at it. Growing 5-7’ in height, sporting footlong white flower panicles each summer, and beautiful foliage each fall, Oakleaf Hydrangea is a must. You can find unnamed seedlings of the species or look for named varieties such as ‘Snow Queen’, ‘Semmes Beauty’, and ‘Alice’. In my experience, you can’t go wrong with any of them.
Camellia Sasanqua is without a doubt my favorite fall flowering shrub. Impossibly durable (it’s common to find specimens over 100 years old), incredibly beautiful in flower and form, and coming in all shapes, sizes, and flower color, a Sasanqua of some kind belongs in ever yard. A few of my favorites are ‘Leslie Ann’ (upright form, white/pink bicolored flowers), ‘Shi Shi Gashira’ (dwarf that makes an excellent informal hedge), and ‘Yuletide’ (compact plant with red flowers & showy gold stamens).
So, as the weather continues to be mild with those cold front swings occasionally and rain begins to be more regular, think about getting some woody trees and shrubs planted into your landscape this winter. Keep in mind the excellent above selections and be sure to check out the Florida-Friendly Landscaping Plant Guide for more possibilities! Happy Gardening!
