In Jo's Yard - 5 Making a Plan to Convert My Yard

January 2018 I contact Amanda Martin of Grounded Solutions about doing the landscape design on my yard (www.groundedsol.com).  I am prepared to describe what I want from my yard, budget, time-line and so on.  Since Amanda is about an hour away from The Villages, we agree we will start with my sending her photos of the yard and the plat of the property so she can begin.  She will do something preliminary, then we will find a time when she can meet me here.  We will go from there.  I am excited – I have a starting point.

I take photos of my grass from every conceivable angle and vantage point.  It’s just grass.  I try to envision tall trees filled with birds and birdsong!  Colorful flower beds, lush frog fruit!  I’m not very good at it.  Well, that’s why I need a professional!  
These are my goals with respect to my yard:  

·       Create a calm natural oasis to enjoy walking around my property, sitting outside

·       Attract birds & wildlife – I enjoyed bird-watching up in Maryland 

·       Conserve water & decrease yard service; convert to drip irrigation

·       Shade the Florida room which faces south & has windows on three sides

·       I have a cat that used to be an outdoor cat up north, but now enjoys outside at the end of a leash

·       Very low maintenance - I have never had a yard or needed to do yardwork in the past. 

I included a list of plants I am interested in having in my yard.  Some I saw in other yards during the FNPS Garden Tours.  Some I learned about in the FNPS presentations. 

·       Flaming Red Maple Tree

·       Chickasaw Plum Tree

·       Weeping Yaupon Holly (maybe with a Passion Vine growing up it)

·       Some kind of Pine (since I live in Pine Hills)

·       Muhly Grass

·       Blue Curls

·       Scorpion Tail

·       Tropical Sage

·       Coral Honeysuckle

I also told Amanda that I’d appreciate any education she could include on how to maintain the landscape or add to it later. 

Five weeks later, Amanda comes to my house with blueprint size paper with a CAD drawing of my property and the planned landscape design.  It shows stylized plants, shrubs, trees everywhere.  There are lines drawn from the pictures to the margins where there are descriptions of each plant – common name, formal name, why it’s included (attracts pollinators, hummingbirds, provides shade, food, refuge).  In some places, she lists multiple plants with question marks.  For each of these, we look up the plant on my laptop computer and she tells me the pros and cons.  Then I decide – let’s go with this one or eliminate that one and she makes notations.  We’re making progress!

In Jo’s Yard – 4 Garden Tour Inspiration

Ah, The Village’s FNPS first Spring garden tour!  I have been looking forward to it.  A part-time job though interferes slightly with my plans.  I have an online event to facilitate 2AM-8AM.  So I determine I will at least visit the four new gardens that have not been on previous tours.  


Do you know what I am looking forward to the most, once my yard is converted?  Walking through it.  I don’t know why, but I am envisioning a riot of colors, some wonderful floral scents and oh, the sounds and sight of birds!  Maybe some graceful flitting butterflies!  I imagine I will look forward to mornings with gloves and clippers.  There was quite a variety of pathways in the yards on this tour – flagstone, pine bark, melaleuca (florimulch), white sand!  I think I could walk miles around my Florida Native yard.  


          Different types of pathways around two homes with Native Landscapes. 

In Jo's Yard - 3 Tips for a Successful Landscape

I so enjoy going to the FNPS Villages Chapter meetings – 4^th Friday of the month at Big Cypress Recreation Center.  Meetings start at 1:30pm, but I would go early to see what plants were in the raffle / auction, or what free literature was available.  I kept notes in a Composition Book.  Looking back here are some snippets – keep mind what a novice I am:

·       Right plant in the right place

·       Layer 1 – TREES – overall canopy for nesting, food source, protection

·       Layer 2 – SHRUBS – add depth, ecological relationship

·       Layer 3 – WILDFLOWERS – annuals can be high maintenance; keep manageable, keep small and weed-able

·       Don’t skimp on the mulch!

·       You need grouping or mass plantings of a plant so the birds can see when flying over

·       Define edges and separate groups / beds of plants, put plants with similar moisture requirements together

Many of these tips must be obvious to anyone who’s had a yard, and flower or vegetable gardens.  But I was trying to soak up what I needed to know in a relatively short time. 


Oh my gosh, Dr. Jason A. Smith, an associate professor at the University of Florida spoke on Urban Tree Diversity – I tried to write down the names of all the trees that looked interesting to me – and I starred a couple like the Sweet Acacia (Acacia farnesiana) with its yellow flowers and the Atlantic White Cedar (Chamaecyparis thyoides) for its aromatic wood.  I miss tall trees!  


Below: (Left) A Catbird enjoys some grape jelly in “my” Maryland back yard, which had a beautiful canopy of tall trees.  (Right) But my “cottage” yard, is too small to grow a majestic Native Live Oak.

In Jo's Yard - 2 Inspiration from FNPS

After looking at re-sale homes and new homes, I finally “landed” in The Village of Pine Hills. The house was being built.  I had no options in the yard / landscape area – there would be grass, and more grass.   I had no say in the shrubs or trees – “The landscaper will plant whatever he’s got in stock that day”.


In the meantime, I tried not to miss the FNPS meetings – what fascinating speakers (Meetings - The Villages FNPS)!  One that stuck in my head was June 24, 2016 – Amanda Martin from Grounded Solutions, a landscape designer (www.groundedsol.com).  Here was someone who could help me create a more interesting outdoor space.  I filed her business card away for future reference.  A vision was slowly forming in my head. 

Then September 30, 2016, The Villages Chapter of FNPS had their first self-guided garden tour.  Eight addresses were on the list and barely 4 hours to squeeze them in.  I made it to seven of them.  What enchanting spaces!  Big yards, small villa yards, some a little bit formal, some a little bit wild!  I wanted one of each!  The photos I snapped barely captured the variety, the “feeling” of the different yards – serene, cool, calm, colorful, stimulating.  
  

 It was October 2016 when my new home was completed.  Homes were still being built in the Village of Pine Hills.  I found I had wonderful neighbors, and I was very happy with my new home, but the yard left something to be desired.  


I had the requisite small tree just inside the 13.5’ easement, a small holly in front of the garage, and some Loropetalum, Indian Hawthorns, and an unknown small shrub around the lamp post and front entrance.  And an expanse of grass.  Not a bird in sight.  I needed a plan!
                            
     What I had                                                                      What I wanted