Updated Florida Exotic Invasive Plant List

The Florida Pest Plant Council has updated their exotic invasive plant lists for 2011.  The list is an excellent resource for ensuring landscape selections do not include plants that can escape and endanger native habitats. FLEPPC separatesd invasives into two categories, I and II. 

Category I includes "invasive exotics that are altering native plant communities by displacing native species, changing community structures or ecological functions, or hybridizing with natives. This definition does not rely on the economic severity or geographic range."

Category II invasives are plants "that have increased in abundance or frequency but have not yet altered Florida plant communities to the extent shown by Category I species. These species may become ranked Category I, if ecological damage is demonstrated of the problem, but on the documented ecological damage caused."

New plants added to the 2011 Category I list:

• Deparia petersenii, Japanese false spleenwort
• Lumnitzera racemosa, black mangrove - Not to be confused with native black mangrove, Avicennia germinans
• Phymatosorus scolopendria, serpent fern, wart fern

New plants added to the 2011 Category II list:

• Ardesia japonica, Japanese ardesia
• Bruguiera gymnorrhiza, large-leaved mangrove
• Cocos nucifera, coconut palm
• Syzygium jambos,  Malabar plum, rose apple

Corrections on the plant list include: 

Jasminum sambac and Solanum jamaicense removed from Category II based on lack of data in natural areas. Urena lobata moved from Category II to Category I.



USDA-NRCS

City and county planners, nurseries and growers, and landscape architects and designers should make note of these new changees.

But Where Are The Gardens?

Garden Design magazine and American Society of Landscape Architects have announced their contest winners in their 2010 Residential Landscapes of the Year. I love reading the Garden Design magazine and looking at the lovely gardens. So I was excited to see the winners. But I found them disappointing. When I think residential, I think of homes, families, communities. When I hear landscapes I think of scenery and views from different angles, times of day, and at different seasons. But when I think of gardens, I think of life evolving right before our eyes, a place to meander, enjoy colors, fragrances, butterflies. Gardens thrive with the encourgagement of physical human touch; planting, picking flowers, fruit, and vegetables, hoeing, weeding, and deadheading. In doing so we encourage ourselves and defuse our tensions. We thrive, too.

But I didn't see any residential gardens. The thirteen winning entries are mainly hardscapes of rock, stone, cement, screens, water pools, evergreens, turf, and grasses, with a few restorations that include valley wildflowers, natural coastlines, and a Japanese styled portico. Where were the gardens?

I get that incorporating landscapes with architectural design and new construction requires the engineering process, straight lines, and hardscapes, but did the winning landscapes have to be stark with "no maintenance" required, or quiet meditation sanctuaries, or coastlines viewed from inside? Maybe its what the resident wanted and more power to them. But the title of the contest should have been 2010's Residential Exteriors of the Year.

In writing this I think I answered my own argument of garden vs residential landscaping. The future of landscape architecture design seems to be going towards the misnomers of sustainable, no maintenance, sterile, no dirty hands, no touching.

Now these are gardens...

Fritham Farm is a residence and Plant Delights Nursery is a combination of residence and private wholesale nursery.



Fritham Farm



Plant Delights Nursery - May 2009

You can energize yourself by meandering through these gardens. The views are thoughtful and inspiring. The maintenance is physical and stress-relieving. More gardens like these would be good for the world's soul.