Weekly Garden Tip

April 9, 2006

By Gene Joyner, Extension Agent
Palm Beach County Cooperative Extension Service

Many landscape plants are slowly recovering from the affects of two bad hurricane years, but if you really look carefully at landscapes many times the plants that seemingly look the best are those which are native to our area. Native plants evolved over many thousands of years and have learned to deal with the type of weather conditions we experience year to year. Many introduced exotics come from tropical regions that don’t experience hurricanes or some of the other stresses we have here and they suffer badly when exposed to them.

If you’re wanting low maintenance landscapes that look nice, there’s no reason not to put in a lot of native plants. They can serve the same function in the landscape as any other introduced exotic, shade, flowers, ground covers and hedges.

Many nurseries locally are carrying larger inventories of native plants due to increased demand and if you want to see examples of native plants doing well simply visit any of the large county or municipal parks in the area many of which have large plantings of native plants

Another place to visit to look at native plants is the Mounts Botanical Garden at 531 North Military Trail in West Palm Beach. The garden is open 8:30 to 4:30 Monday through Saturday and 1 to 5 on Sunday. If you live close to the ocean or intracoastal and are looking for salt tolerant native plants. Visit MacArthur State Park at the north end of Singer Island and walk their nature trail and you can see many examples of plants right close to the ocean and intracoastal that tolerate salt very well.

If you’re in the south county area, visit Gumbo Limbo Nature Center in Boca Raton which also offers a wide assortment of beautiful native plants that have been there for a very long time and you can also see other educational displays at the center as well.
Another good source of information on native plants is the Florida Native Plant Society and Palm Beach County has a very large chapter that meets the third Tuesday of each month at 7:30 p.m. at the Mounts Building Auditorium, 531 North Military Trail in West Palm Beach. Their meetings are very informative and the club often has monthly field trips to native plant or natural areas.

You can also pick up printed information on native plants from the Palm Beach County Extension Service or you can call for native plant information during normal business hours - 233-1750 in the north and central county area or 276-1260 in the south county area.