Many backyards and gardens in Florida tend to lose their green appeal during the holidays, and there are various reasons why this happens. If you have native Florida plants that started withering weeks before Thanksgiving, a bit of degeneration could be part of their natural cycle.
Even your perennials and evergreens may look a bit sad when temperatures fall, particularly if some frost forms overnight; however, this is a seasonal reaction that will subside by the time March comes around. Concerning watering, your plants and grass will certainly miss the copious rain that fell during the Atlantic hurricane season, but this is not something you have to worry about if you have invested in a modern sprinkler system.
The bottom line of holiday landscaping in Cape Coral and across Southwest Florida is that it doesn’t have anything to do with mistletoe. The three elements of Florida holiday gardening are Christmas palms, poinsettias, and living holiday trees. Here is what you need to know:
Christmas Palm Trees
Those 50-foot tall palm trees you see lining the boulevards of Cape Coral, Fort Myers, and other Southwest Florida cities are not very practical for your front garden or your backyard. What you want is Adonidia merrillii, a small ornamental species from the Philippines with a small trunk and an average height of about 20 feet. Christmas palm trees get their name from the red berries they bear around the holiday season; besides, many homeowners in Florida dress them up as tropical holiday trees.
Poinsettias
If you travel to the Sarasota Keys at this time of the year, you will notice some front gardens adorned with Christmas flowers, also known as poinsettias. In Mexico, these plants are known as pastoras, and they grow happily just about anywhere they can get a lot of sunshine. With proper care, these plants can do quite well in Southwest Florida and make for great holiday landscaping. If you get some potted poinsettias as presents this holiday season, give us a call to coordinate transplantation to your garden or backyard so that you can enjoy plenty of them next year.
Living Holiday Trees
If you are used to buying a natural tree each holiday season, or if you have a plastic version that you use over and over, you may want to try a living holiday tree this year. With some planning, you can choose from a number of species that will grow nicely in your yard or garden after the holidays. We are talking about Florida bald cypress, Leyland trees, red cedar, sand pine, and a couple of other species. You can introduce a young tree to your family in a container this holiday season; you can decorate it and care for it so that it is ready for transplantation in January. Give us a call to determine the planting spot and the species; you don’t want a pine or cypress that will sprout huge roots and starve your other plants, but you will truly appreciate the experience of caring for a living holiday tree in Florida.
R & R Sprinkler & Landscape
931 SE 11th Avenue
Cape Coral, FL 33990
(239) 772-2607
