To learn more
• Institute for Regional Conservation The Institute for Regional Conservation provides an encyclopedic amount of information on South Florida ecosystems, plus a guide to using plants in your ZIP Code, www.regionalconservation.org.• University of Florida paper discussing landscape design for water conservation, http://edis.ifas.ufl.e-du/MG027.• Florida Friendly Landscaping: http://www.FloridaYards.orgThis educational website includes a plant database, an animated interactive yard, Florida Friendly Landscaping tutorial and much more. The site is sponsored by the Florida Yards and Neighborhoods program and Florida DEP.• Waterwise, South Florida Landscapes, a free book from the South Florida Water Management District, outlines landscaping for water conservation. It has photos and charts of native and exotic plants, their water needs, growing conditions and more. Write to the South Florida Water Management District, 2121 SW 3rd Ave., Miami, FL 33129.• Natural Florida Landscaping by Dan Walton and Laurel Schiller (Pineapple Press, $12.95) is a guide to bringing native plants back to your yard.• A Guide to Florida-Friendly Landscaping, Florida Yards & Neighborhoods Handbook, 3rd Edition, University of Florida, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, Environmental Horticulture Dept., Gainesville, FL 32611. 352-392-1831, ext, 220.Wise use of native plants can go a long way toward reducing outdoor water use while celebrating the place you call home.
Just ask Ivan Felton, who received an award this year from the Florida Native Plant Society for his irrigation-free yard.
Check with Charles Hanemann in Coconut Grove, who has discovered the charms of native trees and shrubs while learning to identify the birds that now visit his yard.
Talk to ranger Alan Scott at Everglades National Park, who oversaw the construction of the visitors' center after Hurricane Andrew. He asked the Dade Chapter of the Florida Native Plant Society to help landscape the buildings and and pond to showcase the park's plant diversity while giving homeowners ideas for their own yards.
Each of these landscapes can thrive without irrigation.
In Florida, half of our urban water is for use outside the house, says Bruce Adams, water conservation manager for the South Florida Water Management District. ''Of that, better than 95 percent is for irrigation,'' he says.
Too much water not only weakens plant root systems, making them shallow and vulnerable to drought, it causes nutrient runoff that results in algae blooms, coral reef die-off and habitat damage.
Native landscapes require little supplemental irrigation once they have become established.
Felton and his wife Sandra have lived in their Westwood Lake in Miami home for 38 years without benefit of automatic sprinklers.
When Hurricane Andrew cleaned the garden of everything but one tree, Felton says, ``Things drifted until I got into the Native Plant Society.''
On a pie-shaped lot that expands from 40 feet in the front to 100 feet in the back, the retired Baptist pastor has created a bird- and butterfly-rich yard, thanks to such plants as fire bush, beauty berry, willow bustic and Bahama strong back.
SURVIVED DROUGHT
Except for a royal palm that does not like Felton's water thriftiness, most of the plants came through this year's drought without supplemental watering. When he decides to water, he turns to a hose and his stalwart rain barrels, standing against the back of the house.
In Coconut Grove, Ken Cook created a native landscape for Charles and April Hanemann so elegant it makes strangers stop to admire.
The impetus to go native came when Hurricane Katrina toppled a big weeping fig in the front yard.
''I was uninvolved with the landscape until Katrina, and then I said there has to be a better way,'' said Charles Hanemann, who works for a private equity firm.
He began reading plant books his mother gave him and discovered online the Homestead nursery called Plant Creations, where Cook is manager and webmaster. The website is rich with photos and descriptions of native plants. Cook created the design to ``look like this was a woods with the house was put into it, rather than plants placed around the house.''
Small oolitic limestone boulders around the corner lot's perimeter serve several purposes: They are the natural substrate of the ridge on which Coconut Grove is built; they keep cars from crashing through the wooden fence and, because they're cut at differing heights, they give the illusion of elevation change.
The weeping fig was replaced with a native strangler fig, Ficus aurea, and stone pavers were cut to create a courtyard-like entry. Slabs of keystone (fossilized coral mined in Key Largo) serve as a pathway through a small hammock.
LIMIT PLANTS
Cook purposely kept the number of plants low.
''I use a minimal number of plants properly spaced,'' he said, ``to allow them to grow in. It reduces maintenance. It's like giving each kid a room of his own.''
Wild cinnamon, crabwood, Bahama strong bark, black ironwood, Jamaica caper and willow bustic are the native trees put to excellent use here.
Cook began planting the landscape in January. Once the trees have become established, at the end of the first growing season, the garden will require no additional water.
At the Ernest Coe Visitors Center in Everglades National Park, several plants bear identifying labels. The landscape, which replaced grass around the center, snagged an award this year from the Florida Native Plant Society for ecosystem restoration.
Scott says the effort is a re-creation of pineland and hammock habitats on fill soil rather than a true restoration.
Fill dredged from a nearby borrow pit changes the way native plants grow, he says. Most homes have yards with fill, so these trees and shrubs more closely resemble what happens in a home setting than in a natural one.
Locustberry, for instance, is a pineland shrub that ordinarily is small because it lives in poor soil and experiences fires that keep it pruned. Around the visitor's center, the shrub is fluffy and tall.
Rough-leaf velvet seed, grown at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden from park seeds, are taller than those in the pineland.
''Normally, a native pineland is more open,'' Scott said. Fires from lightning strikes in the rainy season keep pineland plants from getting too fat. To simulate fire, volunteers from the Dade chapter cut back grasses and shrubs.
