Imagine you're a ficus whitefly.

You're buzzing around South Florida neighborhoods, working up an appetite. Pretty soon, you come across a scrumptious-looking, 100-foot ficus hedge. Look here, this is the perfect meal for you and 10 million of your friends.

Homeowners throughout South Florida have been playing host to this uninvited guest for the past few years, and it's destroying their ficus hedges.

The best way to fight the whitefly without writing off ficus entirely? Rethinking your idea of what a hedge should look like: No more single species. That's good advice for any kind of major planting, ficus or otherwise.

''We have to stop planting these long stretches of one species,'' said John Pipoly, an urban horticulture extension agent with the Broward County Extension. ``I'm talking about layering and overlapping. We want people to get creative. Use blocks of colors, different species. What I'm saying is, don't put all your eggs in one basket.''

This includes natives. Even if a native plant is resistant to whitefly, you're inviting trouble by planting long stretches of one plant. This practice, known among horticulturists as monoculturing, causes problems no matter what plant you use.

''If you have a 1,000-foot hedge, the insects will come and wipe it out,'' Pipoly said. ``It's not native versus non-native.''

So what does that leave? A scraggly, overgrown border that looks more like a wood lot fence line than a privacy hedge? No hedges at all?

Not so fast, said Dan Malone, owner of Hedge of Protection Services, a landscape design company in Plantation. Malone's company designs and installs all kinds of hedges for his clients, and he has little doubt that mixed hedges are better looking, easier to maintain, and less likely to be wiped out by marauding insects.

This is exactly the kind of hedge he designed and installed for Kimberly Nazuelos, a homeowner in Plantation. Nazuelos was looking for a ''tropical hedge that would fill in and is not a standard ficus hedge.'' The resulting hedge is set against the neighbor's established six-foot eugenia hedge. It contains a variety of colorful and big, leafy plants, including lady palms, bamboo, heliconia, firespike and others.

The hedge Malone provided followed a pattern easily adopted by any gardener.

''You want bold colors in the back, but they're often leggy,'' Malone said. ``So then you have something in front of them as a middle layer. In front you have something short with pizazz.''

There are two kinds of hedges: formal and informal. Naturally, mixed hedges, with all sorts of plant material, look more informal. But you can still have a formal, clipped mixed hedge that isn't a target for hungry bugs.

The trick, said Pipoly, is to think in blocks of color and texture. So instead of a green wall, use alternating species such as cocoplum, firebush, podocarpus and silver buttonwood. All of these can be maintained in a formal shape, but will provide an interesting variety of leaf colors and textures. Mix it up with a palm tree or bamboo clump.

The shape of your formal hedge is also important. Too many formal hedges are poorly maintained, said Pipoly, which leaves them open to insects and wind damage. A properly maintained hedge should be wider at the bottom than the top, so it doesn't become top heavy and blow over in a strong wind. This also allows sunlight to reach the bottom leaves, encouraging strong growth and discouraging insects and mold.

Finally, even formal hedges shouldn't be constantly pruned. If you allow your formal hedges to bush out a little bit before trimming them back, the result will be stronger plants and better leaf growth.

''We need to have some re-education,'' Malone said. ``Gardeners want to take a hedge and break it up with different textures and plants.''

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