Cut down on the amount of water and pesticides in your garden, use mulch, make your own compost and use native plants whenever practical.

If it sounds familiar, it is. Florida Yards and Neighborhoods is a landscape program being promoted by the University of Florida's Cooperative Extension Service. The idea is to make Xeriscaping -- landscaping to minimize water use -- more user-friendly. If you follow its principles, you create areas for wildlife, birds and butterflies and cut down on maintenance.

It's starting to take root in one neighborhood called Killian Pines just south of Miami-Dade College's Kendall campus. Seeing is believing.

One man made the effort to implement the principles in his yard, and now he's helping neighbors to follow his direction.

For Bob Boberman, the stage was set with what seemed like two strokes of misfortune: Hurricane Andrew and the citrus police.

Boberman, who has lived in the neighborhood with his family for 15 years, says there really were pines in his Kendall community until the 1992 hurricane. Weakened pines that stood after the storm were finished off by pine bark beetles. Then came citrus canker, and in the late 1990s, citrus trees were cut down in his area.

As landscape foreman for the city of Coral Gables, Boberman makes trips to the Miami-Dade Cooperative Extension office in Homestead for help and information, and it was there that he saw a poster about Florida Yards and Neighborhoods.

"I said, 'What the heck, I can do that,' " he recalls.

A Florida-friendly yard recycles trimmings so they don't have to be taken to the landfill. That reduces chemical runoff into fresh water and marine ecosystems because the techniques reduce or eliminate the use of pesticides and fertilizers.

Like Xeriscaping, a Florida yard matches the appropriate plants to the site and reduces expanses of grass to save on water use. The right plant in the right place is its mantra.

Boberman saw an opportunity to make lemonade in a lemon-less setting.

TOOK ON A CHALLENGE

After four grapefruit trees were leveled, Boberman put in a swimming pool and met the challenge of creating an environmentally friendly yard, which stretches 180 feet across the back and narrows in the front. A plan grew by stages, and he devised it as he worked.

"All the plants were started from seed or three-gallon containers, cuttings, plants rescued from trash piles and given by neighbors," he says. "Now, I have taken plants from my yard, and given them to the neighbors.

"The major thing I spend money on is mulch. I could lessen that by using free mulch. I have had a couple of loads from tree companies, and put good stuff on top."

(You can put your name on a waiting list to receive mulch when tree trimmers are working to clear phone lines in your neighborhood by calling Florida Power & Light, 305-442-8770 in Miami-Dade, and 954-797-5000 in Broward. Such mulch may not have a uniform look, so Boberman buys bagged mulch to apply a more aesthetically pleasing cover.)

Just beyond the sliding glass doors of the family room, a small pond surrounded by gazanias, marigolds, petunias and caladiums belongs to Kimberly Boberman, 13. You step through the glass into a garden where paths are of large pink bark nuggets, edged with chunks of limestone that came from the swimming pool excavation.

Bromeliads, rain lilies and liriope meander with the path beneath the live oak that is showing signs of how majestic it will become.

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