April Showers for Florida

Ornamental Shrubs and Flowers

Watering your landscape beds will be less work if you will incorporate lots of organic material into the sand or soil. This is usually one of Florida's January/February garden chores but can be done any time of the year. You can use one bag each of peat moss, topsoil, and aged manure for every 10 square feet of garden area to create a rich, nutritious, more drought tolerant soil which enable your flowers, vegetables, and flowering shrubs to grow and bloom throughout the summer with less stress. Your own kitchen and leaf compost,mushroom or worm compost can be used as organic amendments.

Great drought-tolerant flowers: blue daze, gaillardias, lantana, periwinkles, portulaca, moss roses, rain lilies, black-eyed Susan, butterfly weed, gazanias, plumbagos, lorapetalums, African irises, gauras, melampodiums, yarrows, lavenders, society garlic, Dusty Millers, artemisia, confederate jasmine, Mexican heather, clerodendruns, and pentas.

Water conserving shrubs and trees: junipers, Arizona and bald cypresses, ornamental grasses, crape myrtles, bottlebrush, natal plum, Jerusalem thorn, gingko, pine trees, agaves and all succulents, beautyberry, thryallis, mock oranges, palm trees, cycads, and Asiatic jasmines, just to name a few.

Find out your soil moisture conditions. If living near a lakefront, wetland conservation area, or have shady or poor drainage, drought-tolerant plants are not going to be a good investment for you. They will soon succumb to disease and rot. Look for flowers, shrubs and trees that can handle wet roots. Think about putting in a rain gardens for areas that vacillate between dry and wet seasons.

Enjoying the Florida sunshine with a little help from Mother Nature's rainfall will not only be good for your soul - your lawn and flowers will be healthier, less expensive to maintain, and you will have more time to relax and work on that Florida tan safely, knowing that everything will grow in your garden!

For more information on water conservation, go to your state .

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