With the arrival of the rainy season, we have been busy
planting and refreshing our garden beds. Last fall and early this year, I
obtained several new plants for the collection from Fairchild Tropical Botanic
Garden, Montgomery Botanical Center, and Silent Native Nursery/Pro Native
Consulting. Many of them have been in our nursery holding area patiently
waiting to be outplanted into the gardens. We carefully plan where we want to
plant each different species based on the amount of sunlight the plant will
receive, how much water it needs, whether it fits into the theme of the zone,
and other considerations depending on the species. We must have space for the
adult plant’s roots and branches so we take into consideration what is growing
nearby that may compete with the new plant. In certain zones, we may remove a
plant that is old and tired to make space for a new one, or we may rearrange a
zone to accommodate new specimens.
Our gardens are divided into over 40 zones, each of which
has a theme: fragrance, color, tropical-wet (large-leaved exotics),
tropical-dry (succulents), native plants, palms, bamboos, etc. Almost all of
our plants have a human use so our ethnobotanic theme is woven into each zone.
As we find new plants we want to display and add to our collection, we must
first make sure we have room for it. For now, we are focusing on small trees,
shrubs and groundcovers since we are out of space for large trees at the
moment. This is challenging since we have several beautiful palms we would like
to incorporate into the collection: Copernicia
berteroana, Pseudophoenix sargentii var. saone, and Sabal domingensis.
Luckily, they are only seedlings and will take several years before they are
large enough to plant in the ground so we have time to plan.
I walk the grounds regularly, often with our director, Joe
Harris, to review changes and ideas and to check on the health of recently
planted specimens. Once we decide on an idea, I talk to our grounds director,
Veronika Milar, about the changes to be made and she makes it happen. When I
have time or need a break from the office, I work in the gardens planting
and pruning specimens. Everything we plant or relocate is recorded and added to
our database to keep our records up to date. Once new plants are accessioned in
our database, I can print and order accession tags and our lovely display
labels directly from our records. Thank goodness for our previous Associate
Director, Rick Hederstrom, who set our system up with all this in mind.
As an example of our prep work, our newest bed in Zone 20
has been in flux for several months. We removed a mature sea-grape (Coccoloba uvifera) tree in December of
last year, which provided shade to the gallery and office entrance. Our
practice of displaying orchids nearby has been on hold due to the increase in
sunlight and plants being sunburned (plants can get a sunburn or bleach-out
like anything else with too much sun exposure). We thought there might be
enough shade cast on the new bed from nearby mahogany trees so we planted a few
ferns hoping to establish a primitive plant display with ferns, whisk-fern, and horsetails. We installed a short rock
wall to protect plants in the bed from the nearby dryer vent and to train small
ferns to climb along. I researched ferns from dry climates by contacting colleagues in California who grow and exhibit xerophytic ferns, we shopped for native ferns (without much success), and finally settled on a sampling of plants to see how they
would fare: gnetum tree (Gnetum gnemon),
native Boston fern (Nephrolepis exaltata),
silver polypody fern (Phlebodium aureum),
and a crocodile fern (Microsorum
musifolium). Two months and several unhappy ferns later, we decided to
change course and plant sun-loving, pollinator-friendly, native plants. We have
focused on butterfly and bee nectar plants with only a couple of butterfly host
plants, as there are others in nearby zones. The plants are settling in nicely
and the bed is now almost complete. This will be a great talking point on our
TYUP tour to draw attention to gardening with native and pollinator-friendly
plants. The ferns were transplanted into another zone in the shade and are
doing much better. There are many different species of ferns in south Florida,
several of which are endangered due to habitat loss. Once our shady fern grotto is
complete we should have another welcome addition to the TYUP.
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