In landscape design, there are multiple layers of thought. Pure aesthetics and personal preference are one layer of thought, and spatial relationships and the creation of outdoor rooms are another. For many of our projects, the use of native or Florida-friendly plant material is another layer of thought, as well as edible gardening. Another layer of thought that can add sustainable and beneficial elements to a landscape is the design or a native wildlife habitat, creating a living ecosystem.
Many of our recent designs have incorporated butterfly gardens. Butterfly gardens attract butterflies, but other native pollinators. They also act as a food source for some of our native songbirds. The inclusion of a water feature, such as a bird bath, along with some scrub vegetation behind the butterfly garden, creates habitats to support these songbirds. Edible gardens with citrus and other fruiting trees invariably attract rodents and other small mammals. By installing screech owl boxes, we can reduce the number of undesirable inhabitants while creating a living environment for these predatory birds. A lot of our properties are on water, and the addition of bat houses will reduce the biting insect population by thousands per night. On a recent project, the client was concerned about the number of poisonous snakes. We responded by including several man-made roosts for birds of prey,
along with planting large growing open branched trees, such as slash pines, forming natural roosts. Although some of our native predatory birds, such as osprey and red-tailed hawks, may feed on some of these snakes, more importantly they are competitors for the same food source (namely small rodents), thereby deterring the snakes from inhabiting the property.
Using the design process not only to lift the aesthetics of a property but to create a livable ecosystem is just another layer to a successful, sustainable landscape.
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