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Follow the Sarasota Flock
to Win an iPad! If you are attending an outdoor event in Manatee or Sarasota County this Spring and come upon a flock of 48 pink yard flamingos, pull out your smart phone. No, don't call your friends -- snap a photo of the QR code and take the Be Floridian Challenge. When you make a Clean Water Partner Pledge you'll become eligible to win prizes like a pair of authentic Don Featherstone 1950s designed yard flamingos or one of two grand prize iPads! Follow the Flock is a marketing campaign sponsored by our Be Floridian partners in the Sarasota Science and Environment Council with a grant from the Southwest Florida Water Management District. The program promotes best practices for caring for your Florida yard to protect the water quality of our bays and Gulf and protect your fun!
Follow The Flock includes a large-format traveling education display, smartphone "Be Floridian Challenge" game, "Watershed Stewardship" pledge, and social media campaign.
Follow the Flock is scheduled to appear at 20 outdoor and nature-based events and randomly at public places as a flamingo "flash mob" through Spring 2013. See where the flock will appear next at www.followtheflock.org You can also enter the contest by "checking-in" to the Follow the Flock Facebook page (www.facebook.com/scienceandenvironmentcouncil), which promotes future flock "fly-ins" and displays photos from past events. The more you follow the flock and play, the more chances you have to win! The Science and Environment Council of Southwest Florida is a member organization of 23 science and environment organizations located in Sarasota and Manatee Counties.  Follow the Flock on Facebook |
Tip of the Month: Hold That Fertilizer!  If you plan to fertilize your lawn this year, wait until the grass is actively growing to do it. In the winter, grass in our area is dormant and can't absorb the nutrients in fertilizer -- so don't waste your time and money. Instead, wait until the spring growing season kicks into gear and feed your lawn with a fertilizer containing at least 50% of the nitrogen in a slow, or timed-release, form. This will give your lawn the the nutrition it needs when it needs it, gradually and more efficiently. Not sure what fertilizers are 50% slow-release? Check out our Florida-Friendly Products list. And remember: Rain doesn't water fertilizer in, it washes it away -- right into our ponds, bays and Gulf. Instead of fertilizing before it rains, apply just a quarter-inch of water from your sprinkler system after you fertilize to keep the granules on your lawn and out of our waters. Now that's what we call being Floridian! |
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Learn how to ...
Plant an Herb Garden
Prune Your Plants Properly
Design Your Landscape
Make a Rain Barrel
Install Micro-Irrigation
Prepare a Spring Vegetable Garden
and much more ...
Check out the
Be Floridian
Events Calendar
for Workshops and Seminars
Near You!
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Classes and workshops offer free or low-cost instruction on how to save time and money by practicing Florida-Friendly Landscaping™ principles. Check out your county extension service to get started or to learn advanced skills.
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What in the world is a hardiness zone,
you ask, and why does it matter?
Good question! Hardiness zones determine where plants can grow based on the expected average coldest temperatures. They are why Arctic lupine flourish in Alaska, but not in Florida. Likewise, they explain why our lovely live oak trees are only found in the Deep South. Plants evolve to flourish in a specific climate, and hardiness zones provide gardeners guidance about what plants are most likely to thrive in their yard.
Updated annually by the U.S. Departmentof Agriculture, plant hardiness zones represent the average lowest annual winter temperatures. They do not represent the coldest temperatures ever recorded in an area, but are simply the average lowest winter temperature for the location over a specified time. The maps key on winter weather because cold tolerance, more than heat tolerance, determines whether a plant will survive in an area.
The 2012 USDA Plant Hardiness Map has 13 zones; Florida has four major zones, 8 to 11. The greater Tampa Bay area, from Pasco County to Sarasota County, generally lies within Zones 9 and 10. A little research ahead of time can save you a lot of grief -- and money -- unless you don't mind the frantic backyard scamper to cover your beloved tropical plants with blankies and Christmas tree lights on those cold winter nights!
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Get This Sign For Your Yard!
Show your pride at Being Floridian and using native Florida plants with this gorgeous sign produced by the Florida Association of Native Nurseries. Locally, the signs are available from our Be Floridian partner, Florida Native Plants Nursery in Sarasota, as well as Wilcox Nursery in Largo. Find a native plant nursery near you at plantrealflorida.org and ask if they have the sign for sale. And while you're at it, buy a few more native plants too!
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Join Us and Learn How to
"Garden Like A Floridian" in April
Take a day off from those Springtime yard chores and learn how to "Floridify" your landscape at our "Garden Like A Floridian" workshop on Saturday, April 6 from 9 a.m.-2:30 p.m.. The workshop will be held at Weedon Island Preserve in St. Petersburg.
Workshop sessions will teach you how to make your grass "greener" (as in eco-friendly); how to keep stormwater out of our waterways through simple landscape practices; and how to design an appealing Florida Yard that will make you AND your neighbors proud.
For added inspiration, Tampa homeowners Rick and Nanette O'Hara will share their Extreme Yard Makeover -- an ongoing effort to create a low-maintenance landscape that saves water and money while giving them more time to fish!
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The O'Hara's "Water-Wise" Tampa Backyard
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Your registration fee of $10 includes lunch, terrific raffle prizes, a host of take-home goodies, AND free native plants to help you kick-start your own Florida Yard transformation! You may also purchase a rain barrel for just $5 (limit one per household, please).
Advance registration and payment required.
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"Thankful To Be Floridian"
Facebook Photo Contest Winners
We asked our Facebook fans to post a photo they've taken that illustrates why they're thankful to be a Floridian. Congratulations to Adrienne Caracci, Kelly Gee and Jean Hall, whose photos received the most votes in our Facebook photo contest. Clearly, we Floridians are bonkers about our beautiful birds!!
The contest winners won prizes such as gardening books, tote bags and flamingo mousepads.
Here are the winning photos.
 | | Pileated Woodpecker by Adrienne Caracci |
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Burrowing Owl by Kelly Gee
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wa·ter·shed: noun \ˈwȯ-tər-ˌshed, ˈwä-\
An area of land that drains to an open body of water
If you didn't know what a watershed was, don't feel bad. Many people don't. But that's a shame, because we all live in a watershed and whatever we do in our homes and yards affects the waters that are the source of our fun! Your neighborhood pond or storm drain may drain to a creek, that drains to Tampa Bay and ultimately to the Gulf of Mexico. Caring for our watersheds -- and the waters they surround -- is what Be Floridian is all about.
Our partners in Pinellas County have launched a new campaign to help county residents better understand the importance of watersheds. Watershed: where we LiveWorkPlay recognizes the link between daily activities and the health of the waterways that are the main reason people live in and visit Pinellas County.
The campaign was launched last November with a live ETown Hall Forum ( watch the replay here). Public Service Announcements on the Bay News 9 website describe simple ways people can protect their watersheds. Soon to come are custom wraps on a few county vehicles with messages about reducing fertilizer use, brochures, and other informational tools.
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Plants for True Floridians
 Florida Native
Tampa Vervain or
Tampa Verbena
(Glandularia tampensis)
These showy lavender balls of delicate flowers are rare in the wild and listed as endangered in Florida. But they are cultivated by a number of native plant growers and widely available commercially. They look lovely as part of a wildflower garden or landscape border and will attract butterflies and bees. Vervain grows to a height of 1-2 feet in zones 8-11 (Don't know what this means? Check out the article to the left.). It tolerates a variety of soils, in full sun to part shade. Although it prefers wet areas, it is quite drought-tolerant once established. Their only drawback? They tend to be short-lived so be prepared to replace them often.
Florida Friendly/Non-Native
St. Bernard's Lily
(Anthericum saundersiae)
A delicate ornamental grass for well-drained areas, St. Bernard's Lily is also called shooting star lily for its starburst-like blooms at the tip of long slender sheaths. It grows in foot-tall clumps with petite white lily-like flowers, likes full to partial sun and looks best in large mixed beds, borders or containers . It can grow in wet soil if in full sun, or average soil if in partial shade but needs well-drained soil. St. Bernard's lily lives for several years and can be divided to "share the lily love."
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Recipes for Relaxing
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 If it's February, it's strawberry season here in West Central Florida. This month you can find loads of lovely strawberries at markets and produce stands, so step right up and indulge! Better yet, with all that free time you have because of your Florida-Friendly Yard, why not make a batch of this delicious jam? It's perfect for toast, muffins, or a PBJ sandwich. And, it's super easy to make.
Quick Strawberry Jam
1 pound Florida strawberries, washed, caps removed and halved
2/3 to 3/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons powdered fruit pectin
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
Mash strawberries in a large bowl using a potato masher or fork. Add sugar, pectin and lemon juice. Stir well. Pour mixture into a 12-inch nonstick skillet and boil until slightly thickened, about 5 minutes. Remove from skillet and pour into a bowl to cool. Once jam is at room temperature, cover tightly and refrigerate until ready to serve. Makes about 1-1/4 cups.
Jam will keep, chilled in an airtight container, for 2 weeks.
Recipe from strawberrysue.com
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Happy Valentine's
Day to our Flamingo Fans!
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What's Be Floridian?
Be Floridian is an educational campaign sponsored by the Tampa Bay Estuary Program. Our partners include Manatee, Pinellas, and Sarasota counties; the cities of Clearwater, St. Petersburg and Tampa; and a variety of landscape designers, gardening coaches, fertilizer companies and lawn care specialists. We are calling on all Southwest Floridians to help protect what makes Florida so fun -- our bays, lakes, rivers and the Gulf of Mexico -- by skipping the fertilizer in the summer to prevent water pollution and creating landscapes that flourish in harmony with Florida's quirky climate.
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