Spring blooms offer many options for your garden. Just say no to pesticides, insecticides.
The first zebra heliconian butterfly arrived earlier this past week to great celebration among the ‘littles’.
We had been following the progress of monarch caterpillars chomping their way through our milkweed, and searching for their chrysalis, so having the zebra arrive first was a big surprise. A beautiful orange Gulf fritillary showed up the same day and I spent an hour chasing them both around for some good photos. The orange wings on pink jatropha blossoms against the intense blue sky made for some wonderful shots. The kids discovered more caterpillars and found new flowers they hadn’t seen before, and they’re starting to learn the names of the plants. My 3-year-old loves the red tips of the cocoplum leaves, and also the blue flowers of plumbago, but mostly he loves that ‘plum’ is in the name of both plants!
One of my favorite early morning surprises this past week was finding a dear friend and her son having coffee on my loggia overlooking the garden. It’s so much better to have coffee in a garden than on a sidewalk, so I was delighted that they had embraced my offer to come by anytime. It also gave me a chance to take them through the garden and show off all my blooming plants. Any gardener knows that this is truly a highlight — gardens are for sharing and are so much more fun with friends.
We looked at the small yellow star-like blossoms on the bay cedar, and the larger yellow flowers on the Bahama senna, along with the multitude of coreopsis blooms. Coreopsis is Florida’s state wildflower and there are several delightful species, all sporting bright yellow daisy-like blossoms with yellow or black centers. And they are all pollinator magnets. Wild coffee, Pyschotria nervosa, is just now coming into bloom with fragrant clusters of small white flowers that will become brilliant red berries loved by birds. This is one of the best plants out there for semi-shaded conditions. It makes a terrific tall hedge, growing to 10 feet, or is a lovely specimen plant. It will fill in any bare spot in the garden with glossy dark green, deeply serrated foliage that is stunning in dappled light. It’s tough and a quick grower, easily pruned to a given height; but always use hand pruners — never shear this plant!
Locustberry, Brysonima lucida, is another beauty right now, with stunning pink, yellow and red blooms on the same flower. Blue Carolina petunia, white plumbago, red, pink and blue sage, pink panama rose, lavender wooly teabush, yellow thryallis, red coral bean, orange Florida firebush, purple porterweed, and white pearlberry are some other beautiful natives adding to the garden’s colorful display.
Best replacement plants for ficus hedges
We always seem to be getting back to hedges. Several of you are taking out your ficus hedges and want to know the best replacement plants. This is a loaded question: it really depends on what type of look you’re after. For a single species, more formal look, there are many options: Silver or Green Buttonwood, Conocarpus erectus, Spicewood, Calyptranthes pallens, Redberry stopper, Eugenia confusa, Spanish stopper, Eugenia foetida, Florida boxwood, Schaefferia frutescens, Simpson stopper, Myrcianthes fragrans, Florida privet, Forestiera segregate, and Cinnamon bark are just a few that make great privacy screens and many of these have fragrant flowers as well.
Our town has adopted a motto of ABC: anything but Clusia, as this plant is now being overused by landscapers and is poised to present the same issues as Ficus benjamina, whose overplanting created a monoculture bringing in the scourge of white fly. Always remember that nature abhors a vacuum and an overabundance of a single species is a recipe for disaster.
While the above-listed plants may be used as single species hedges, it is always more interesting, creative, and beautiful to create a screen using a variety of plants. These will in turn provide the diversity needed to sustain pollinators, birds, and wildlife. A mixed hedge using Dahoon Holly, Ilex cassine, Pigeon plum, Coccoloba diversifolia, Bahama strongbark, Bourreria succulenta, Marlberry, Ardisia escallonoides, wild coffee, Psychotria nervosa, cocoplum, Chrysobalanus icaco, Saw Palmetto, Serenoa repens, and Jamaica caper, Capparis cynophallophora, will provide thick, lush, maintenance free foliage with interesting texture, color and fragrance. And these are just a few of the many wonderful options available.
What’s most important is to understand the serious damage we are doing to our environment and our ecosystem by continuing the use of pesticides and fungicides (neonicotinoids and organophosphates) on our lawns and hedges. Every day, “environmental” companies invade our island to apply what are basically poisons to our landscapes. These insecticidal sprays and drenches contain imidacloprid, a “likely carcinogen” with proven links to autism, Parkinson’s, numerous cancers, and other neurological disorders. Sadly, we are not aware of the delayed effects of continually absorbing small amounts of the pesticides that invisibly contaminate our world. Numerous scientific studies have shown that there is no “safe” level of toxins in our environment; our health and that of our children is inextricably linked to these chemicals, even if they are registered in the smallest amounts.
In her book “Silent Spring”, published in 1962, Rachel Carson documented the perils of insecticides and particularly DDT, ultimately saving the American bald eagle from extinction. She stated that pesticides “now contaminate soil, water, and food, that they have the power to make our streams fishless and our gardens and woodlands silent and birdless. Man, however much he may like to pretend the contrary, is part of nature. Can he escape a pollution that is now so thoroughly distributed throughout our world?”
It’s hard to believe that 60 years after these words were published, we are still using these chemicals, even though the proof of their toxicity has been well documented. Childhood leukemia is 35% more prevalent now than 30 years ago, Autism has increased 70% since the introduction of glyphosate in 1974, and Parkinson’s, the fastest growing brain disease in the world, has almost tripled its numbers since 1990. Chemical exposure is permanent and, especially in children, can have lasting effects on brain development and neurological function. Almost all of us, including our children, have neonicotinoids and organophosphates in our blood.
Planting native species eliminates the need for insecticides, but you don’t have to remove any of your non-native ornamental plants. Just stop spraying them. Your pesticide companies will argue that your bougainvillea blossoms will be eaten by worms and your lawns will develop unsightly fungus. Don’t worry — nothing will die! Stop spraying your bougainvillea and you will be delighted with the songbirds that arrive to devour the worms for their nesting young, serenading you all the while. Your plants and lawns will be far healthier when you stop killing all the beneficial organisms in the soil that enable the plants to thrive; and your children and pets will be able to play outside on said lawns without fear of toxins. Those nasty, precautionary signs left by the chemical companies saying the lawn was just treated and to stay off mean just that — but they neglect to mention that the toxins remain in the soil for years. And these toxins leach into our waterways and aquifers as soon as it rains, which you might notice happens frequently.
Just say no to chemicals and we’ll all be healthier; the air will smell sweet again, and eventually our water and soil will recover. Nature is nothing if not resilient, we just need to give her a chance.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Spring offers garden options, but say no to insecticides, pesticides
