by Beth Bolles | Mar 18, 2021
Plants with variegated foliage are very popular landscape selections. As flowers fade on other plants, the colors of variegated foliage continue to add interest through multiple seasons.
A very adaptable shrub that has been around for a long time, now has a selection with beautiful variegated foliage. Juliet™ cleyera offers green and white evergreen foliage that can brighten up a garden year around. New foliage adds additional interest with a maroon tinge.
Variegated foliage of Juliet™ cleyera. Photo by Beth Bolles, UF IFAS Extension Escambia County
Like other selections of Cleyera, Juliet™ needs to be matched to an appropriate spot to accommodate its mature size. Shrubs will reach about 8 feet in height with a spread of about 5 feet. Plants may look best when left to grow in a more natural form with light selective pruning. This shrub is probably not suited for planting in front of home windows but used as a specimen or as a nice screen plant.
Once established, cleyera is a low maintenance plant and is adapted to grow well without routine irrigation. My home landscape has very well drained soil and I have not needed to apply supplemental irrigation to two cleyera shrubs in over 20 years. Consider a spot that receives full sun or partial shade for your plants.
An added advantage of cleyera shrubs in general is that bees are attracted to the flowers so it makes an additional nectar source for pollinators in the spring.
by Carrie Stevenson | Mar 11, 2021
The ancient cycad, coontie, is a hardy and attractive plant for Florida landscapes. Photo credit: Carrie Stevenson, UF IFAS Extension
The plant has a crazy-sounding name, more like some little animal you’d find in Australia than a native plant. However, an ancient Florida plant it is, and a tough one at that. Growing close to the ground, it most resembles a large fern or a sago palm, if the sago had smooth, rounded leaf edges. Like the sago, the coontie (Zamia floridana) is a cycad—a group of palmlike plants that have been around so long that triceratops and stegasauruses ate them! Coonties are the only cycads native to North America, found in the states and island nations like Cuba and the Bahamas.
Male cones (strobilus) of coontie are thinner and shorter than female cones. Photo credit: Dan Culbert, UF IFAS
Another interesting feature of the coontie is its seed cones. These are large reddish orange cones that resemble magnolia seedpods. Both sexes of plant produce them in clusters ranging from one to five of the 2-7” long cones. Cones from the male produce pollen, while females produce seeds. If you are interested in attracting wildlife to your yard, the coontie provides good low-growing cover for birds and small mammals. It is also the preferred food for the caterpillar of the rare Atala butterfly. Members of the Timucuan and Calusa tribes ground up the starchy root of the coontie as a flour. However, the root contains a toxin and if it is not removed first, ingestion could result in severe abdominal pain and vomiting. From the late 1880’s through World War I, a large starch industry existed in Florida, producing flour from the coontie root.
Adult female atala butterfly, showing royal blue streak on forewings. Photo credit: Sandy Koi, University of Florida
At home in drier soil conditions like oak hammocks and pinelands in north central Florida, these plants can also adapt to a variety of soil pH types. Coonties are drought, cold, and salt tolerant, thus a great landscape choice for coastal landscapes near the Gulf or a bay. The plants are very long-lived and adaptable. In fact, the book Florida’s Best Native Landscape Plants notes it is “Very hardy and easy to care for. Will grow well in any part of Florida, even outside its normal range. An exceptional replacement for the closely related, often used, but non-native sago palm.” In other words, this is an ideal landscape plant that should be used more throughout Florida.
by Stephen Greer | Mar 11, 2021
Landscaping with native plants brings opportunities and challenges while adding diversity and beauty to the home. There are many factors that come into play to successfully grow plants. As gardeners, we all want things to look exceptional for all to enjoy. Native plants have evolved over long periods of time naturally in a given region without intervention, bringing much needed diversity to natural areas and landscapes. A big plus for natives are the flowers presented for the local bee populations and other pollinators assisting in the continuation of the plant species potentially established over thousands of years.
Landscape of Native Plants. Photo Credit: Stephen Greer, UF IFAS Extension Santa Rosa County
Native plants have evolved in natural communities and are found to be interdependent not only plant to plant yet with soil type, soil microbial activity through bacteria and fungus, specific site location and others though biodiversity of these living communities. Part of this community is often referred to as the soil web creating the connections of billions upon billions of organisms in the critical survival of the plants, insects and other animals we see. The first steps when considering native plants for your landscape are to do your research and contact your local Extension office. Some questions to consider may include: Does it grow best in well drained sand or wet soils or require high in organic matter? Will full sun, part-shade to full shade be needed?
Coontie Palm in Landscape. Photo Credit: Stephen Greer, UF IFAS Extension Santa Rosa
Plants that are native and non-native are often seen in the same landscape setting. Consideration should be taken to determine if either of the groups are aggressive in expanding beyond the intended plant setting. Before moving on, non-native is in reference to plants that are introduced to a plant community that came from a totally different plant location. An example of that location being hollies from southeast Asia or South America or even a different area of the United States. Many have been researched and observed for many years under managed situations before being introduced into the local landscape nursery markets. Once in a while a plant is introduced that has not gone through a long rigorous study and can become naturalized outside of its normal plant zones and establish as an invasive species. This highly adaptable aggressive habit can, and often will colonize a given location out competing the native plants. Kudzu is a good example of an invasive exotic plant that is naturalized in the southeastern U.S.
As gardeners there are opportunities to have positive impacts on some of these diminished native habitat areas that can be threatened by growth of urban and rural areas in Florida. Establishing native plants areas into the landscape with proper soil preparation, managed water needs and more gives that chance for this interdependent system of plants, animals and nonliving elements to remain established with big impacts.
Virginia Sweetspire. Photo Credit: Stephen Greer, UF IFAS Extension Santa Rosa County
Native plants can be a working part of the garden from wonderful flowers, season color change, leaf foliage of multiple sizes and shapes to feed the insects that feed the birds, leaves and nuts that feed so many other animals for us to enjoy seeing. Balance is such a big part of being a successful gardener. Remember not all native plants are suitable for landscape spaces, do your research and ask for assistance from the experts to determine if it is the right plant for the right place.
by Daniel J. Leonard | Dec 9, 2020
The last several weeks have brought consistently cool weather to the Panhandle, with a few downright cold nights dipping well below freezing. Though winter isn’t officially here, that won’t happen until December 21st, grass mowing season is definitely over and, if you’re like me and didn’t cover your raised bed garden on those nippy nights, vegetable growing has also slowed significantly. So, what are us horticulturally minded folks with cold-weather cabin fever to do? It’s time to take advantage of sweat-free temperatures, break out the shovels and pruners, and get to work in the landscape!
Master Gardeners demonstrate correct tree planting techniques.
The months of December through February are ideal times for planting new trees and shrubs. The reasons for this are simple. Days are short, rain tends to be plentiful, temperatures are cool, and plants are mostly dormant. While newly installed plants need water to become established regardless of when they are planted, demand for supplemental irrigation is significantly less in winter (one of our rainiest seasons) and the chances of a new planting dying from thirst is slim relative to warmer months. Also, planting in winter gives trees and shrubs several months of above ground dormancy to focus their resources below ground, recover from the shock of transitioning from a nursery container into your native soil, and produce valuable roots that will help it get through its first summer. Think about it. Would it be easier for you to start and finish a major outdoor project in July with one bottle of water to drink or in December with an ice chest full? Plants prefer the same!
Not only is winter perfect for planting, tis the season for pruning many species too, deciduous trees (those that lose their leaves in the fall) in particular! The first reason to prune these species in the winter is to give the plants several months to begin healing before growth resumes in spring and insect and disease pressure ramps up again. Many serious pests and diseases of trees are most active during warm, wet weather and all of them have easier access to attack trees through open wounds. Prune in winter to help avoid unwanted pest and disease infestations. Also, dormancy has conveniently knocked the leaves off deciduous species’ branches, allowing us a clear view of the tree’s crown and giving us the ability to make clear, clean, strategic pruning cuts. Proper pruning can help maintain a strong central leader that produces a stately, straight tree and remove dead and diseased branches that could cause problems in the future.
While planting in the winter is always ideal and we just outlined several reasons pruning now can be good, not all plants should be pruned when dormant. For instance, old-fashioned hydrangeas and azaleas that produce blooms from the previous season’s growth. Pruning these in the winter removes all the flower buds that would have bloomed the next summer and what’s the point of an azalea or hydrangea that doesn’t bloom? Also, many small trees and shrubs, like Crape Myrtle and Vitex, may never need pruning if you site them where they will have room to mature without encroaching on other plants or structures.
If you have any questions about planting trees and shrubs, what, when, and how to prune, or any other horticultural topic, please contact your local UF/IFAS Extension Office! Enjoy the weather and happy gardening!
by Matt Lollar | Dec 9, 2020
A planted tree with water retention berm. Photo Credit: Matt Lollar, University of Florida/IFAS Extension – Santa Rosa County
Often, Extension agents are tasked with evaluation of unhealthy plants in the landscape. They diagnose all sorts of plant problems including those caused by disease infection, insect infiltration, or improper culture.
When evaluating trees, one problem that often comes to the surface is improper tree installation. Although poorly installed trees may survive for 10 or 15 years after planting, they rarely thrive and often experience a slow death.
Fall/winter is an excellent time to plant a tree in Florida. Here are 11 easy steps to follow for proper tree installation:
- Look around and up for wire, light poles, and buildings that may interfere with growth;
- Dig a shallow planting hole as wide as possible;
- Find the point where the top-most root emerges from the trunk;
- Slide the tree carefully into the planting hole;
- Position the point where the top-most root emerges from the trunk slightly above the landscape soil surface;
- Straighten the tree in the hole;
- Remove synthetic materials from around trunk and root ball;
- Slice a shovel down in to the back fill;
- Cover the exposed sides of the root ball with mulch and create water retention berm;
- Stake the tree if necessary;
- Come back to remove hardware.
Digging a properly sized hole for planting a tree. Photo Credit: Matt Lollar, University of Florida/IFAS Extension – Santa Rosa County
Removing synthetic material from the root ball. Photo Credit: Matt Lollar, University of Florida/IFAS Extension – Santa Rosa County
Straightening a tree and adjusting planting height. Photo Credit: Matt Lollar, University of Florida – Santa Rosa County
For more detailed information on planting trees and shrubs visit this UF/IFAS Website – “Steps to Planting a Tree”.
For more information Nuttall Oaks visit this University of Arkansas Website.
