A native Sargent's cherry palm and Sabaletonia, or scrub palm, and the native cycad called coontie are all Florida contributions from xeric conditions.

And that's a major point here. Bernstein has taken up the commitment of Fairchild to reduce water use and made it his own.

''The only things that go into [my] front landscape are things that do not use much water,'' he says. ``The sooner individuals and municipalities get on board, the nicer it will be.''

Mingling harmoniously among drought-tolerant natives in the never-irrigated garden are plants of Madagascar, Africa and the American deserts:

• Alluaudia procera (al-you-wad-ee-ah) has long slender arms like some bristly sea creature. A shrub or tree of Madagascar's spiny forest, it flourishes among similarly barbed plants in a harsh landscape that is dry for eight to nine months of the year. That area averages about 20 inches of rain annually, so the alluaudia thrives here in wetter weather as long as the soil has excellent drainage.

• Adansonia ruprostipa, a baobab that produces orange to red flowers. This is the smallest of the baobabs and it is just a baby in Bernstein's garden. While it usually reaches 15 to 18 feet, it can stretch up much higher. Its fat reddish trunk has a distinctive bottle shape when it matures.

• Euphorbia stenoclada from the sand dunes of southern Madagascar. Its branches are reminiscent of candelabra cactus or even some corals, but they end in wicked spines. They like to be shrubby, but Bernstein is training his to be more treelike.

• Pyrenacantha malvifolia from the Horn of Africa and Kenya is a caudiciform vine, meaning the base is a caudex or water-storing organ. When Bernstein first bought this plant, about 10 years ago, its base was baseball size.

He put it in the ground four years ago at football size. Now, it's the size of the Great Pumpkin and could well reach six or eight feet across.

• Herunia species. This stapelia relative has crawled out of its clay pot and spread into a dwarf forest of squarish green fingers. Lovely star-shaped flowers are dark red, though smelly enough to attract flies.

• Fouquieria splendens, also called ocotillo and buggy whip, from the American Southwest and Mexico, does just fine here next to a handsome blue Agave neglecta that's another Florida native.

Among the tallest plants in this collector's garden are the pachypodiums and the variegated Opuntia cactus.

Pachypodium rutenbergianum, another Madagascar plant, is full of leaves now and grows quickly in the rainy season. In winter, when it's deciduous, Bernstein says it photosynthesizes through its bark so while leafless it isn't dormant. It has oleander-like flowers that are white.

SOME PROTECTION

In the summer rainy season, Bernstein keeps his small potted succulents in a small fabric shadehouse set up in the side yard. It protects them from too much water, not too little.

Outside, the big plants grow like crazy and are this photographer's personal paradise.