Boberman's brother-in-law works for a grocery chain, and was able to provide 50 or 60 pineapple heads from the produce discards. In 18 months, they have grown into fruit-producing plants nearing the time for harvest. Boberman has used them as he does their more ornamental relatives, the bromeliads, massed several plants deep following the edge of the paths.

EDIBLE TREATS

Replacing citrus are other fruit trees: mango, litchi, mamey sapote, carambola, sugar apple, bananas and a Brazilian cherry.

"I like to look at gardens, but I like something to eat from them, too," Boberman says. "Last year we made smoothies of pineapples, bananas and mangoes."

Milkweed has seeded itself here and there, and Boberman gives the plants their head because they're so attractive to monarch butterflies. Passion vines have found perches to bring in the zebra longwings.

Chenille plants, with long ropes of tiny red flowers, have grown in to about seven feet high by twice that wide. Just around the corner, Boberman planted dwarf chenille as a ground cover.

A third related shrub with narrow green leaves edged in red, Acalypha godseffiana, has puffed out like a bantam rooster, while the pink porterweed next to it sends out skinny flower stalks bearing pink flowers.

Boberman has run his path more or less around the perimeter of the yard, with beds curving in and out. Big, full shrubs on the outside of the path screen views and provide privacy. But he has made the walk more interesting.

He has created pint-size islands that interrupt the path's flow. They resemble teardrop-shaped cypress domes and hammocks that make the long, sweeping river of grass in the Everglades flow around them. These domesticated islands are home to wildflowers such as tickseed and Indian blanket.

Boberman also uses the large shrubs to hide compost piles. As the shrubs curve in from the fence line, they disguise the repository of cuttings. Recycling is one goal of the Florida-friendly yard, allowing nutrients trapped within the leaves and twigs to recycle back into the soil -- and reduce waste disposal.

As firebushes on a northern edge of the yard have increased in size, Boberman has pruned up the lowest twigs to make the plants look more like small trees than shrubs. He now is adding monstera and other mid-level plants to visually connect the ground to the tallest part of the shrubs.

"Most of these plants require little water," he says.

He allows the feeling of the backyard to flow into the front, but with a more measured and controlled effect. The grass still is there, but so also are curving beds of bromeliads and begonias, another island of triangle and queen palms, philodendron, begonias and Mexican blue bells.

Dwarf Fakahatchee grass softens the edges of the walk to the front door.

If you look closely at the Boberman front yard, you'll notice a small sign: Certified Florida Yard. Laura Vasquez, with Dade/IFAS Cooperative Extension Service, has gone over a checklist of criteria that are used to qualify a landscape for the designation.

Not far away, there's another Florida Yard in the making, thanks to plants from Boberman's yard and his help. Palms and wild petunias from Boberman's yard now are spilling gracefully across the property line of a next-door neighbor, with permission, of course.

"If you do it, it inspires other people," Boberman says.

CREATING A FLORIDA-FRIENDLY YARD

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