To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.

~ Jane Austen

“Mansfield Park”, 1814, p. 85

Our spring has been rough. Summertime temperatures teasingly near the 90’s with nary a drop of rainfall last month. Usually in April, Central Florida receives 3.78 inches of rain, but last month, Orlando only received .37 inches. Since the beginning of 2025, our rainfall is down 7 inches for the year. Fortunately, this month, in the first two weeks of May, we should catch up with the rainfall. We can hope for 6” to 7” just this week.

What does drought stress look like in the landscape?

Drought stressed blueberries, podocarpus, and viburnum.

So what should you do if you find your shrubs?

• Handwater your plants on the days you cannot irrigate. Make sure you saturate rootball.

• Make sure irrigation system is hitting the base of the plant. Remember its the rootball that needs water, not the leaves.

• Hold off on fertilizing till rains arrive.

• Cut the brown fronds or foliage out.

• Do not spray pesticides.

Two ways to help prevent drought-stress in Spring and WInter:

• Right Plant, Right Place based on your soil conditions, either xeric, mesic, or hydric soils.

• Add organic amendments to your soil. One bag of topsoil or compost, one bag of peat, and one bag of manure for every 10 square feet of area.

Here is a great chart for building healthy Soil with organic amendments:

Find out how to have a great landscape in May, despite the heat and lack of rain. Check it out!

In April, our Art in Bloom Garden Tour traveled to Savannah, Georgia, and Charleston, South Carolina. We visited hidden gardens in Savannah, toured historic homes and plantations, learned how to propagate beautiful irises, and enjoyed a delicious cooking lesson of classic Southern cuisine, and dining in style with a night dinner cruise!  Don’t miss another garden adventure. Go to Art in Bloom Garden Tours!  Tony and I would love to have you join us!

Lizzie’s showing off her amaryllis and warns about being a jive turkey! Her life experience with a bird in the hand and two in the bushes is real. Lizzie talks turkey in her post this month.

Savannah and Charleston have beautiful, shade-tolerant pocket gardens in nearly every landscape. They use dwarf mondo grass as turf, Confederate jasmine on wrought iron fences, and this fun ornamental plant survives Zone 7 winters, and Zone 11 hot temperatures. My Plant of the Month also has yellow Asteraceae flowers. In the shade! Find out what it is and try it! Its architectural foliage is perfect for elegant, whimsical, or classic gardens.

When I go to the theme parks, I admire their instant landscapes that provide that ‘Wow’ factor around every corner. The designs, plant selections, and colors are inspiring. But usually, the theme park attraction landscapes are used as seasonal plantings and expensive. They are designed to be short-term, and believe me; we pay for it in every ticket. City and county landscapes on the other hand, should be examples of sustainable landscapes. My Landscape Malpractice this month was beautiful but not sustainable or cheap, and the location was on a rarely used avenue. It will be interesting to watch it over the next year and see how these new hybrid perennials will do.

My design tip this month is a creative exercise for a landscape that has great bones and potential. Let me know what you would do with an empty slate landscape with a beautiful fountain.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the women who are Moms! Moms with children, Stepmoms, Moms of fur babies and reptiles, Frat Moms, and teachers who serve as Moms in the classroom. My Mom loved roses. Our family consisted of six children in nine years, so she was running from morning till night. She only had one rose bush at a time. But it was always a beautiful rose when it bloomed. Great memories.

If you don’t want to get up early to listen to Better Lawns and Gardens, you can always listen to our podcast here.

Take it easy this month in the landscape, try not to stress out your lawn with excessive chemical treatments. The rainy season will be here shortly.

Homeowner Associations (HOA’s) need to straighten their act out. It has been six months since the end of hurricane season, and you can still see the damage from tropical storm force winds. The frontage of this community has over 15 trees damaged by storm winds. This length of time and the new growth on these sadly leaning oak trees means that the trees have recovered from the storm and are being forced to live out their lives crooked. Not straightening these healthy trees means that eventually they will be expensively replaced (just from the HOA embarrassment of how they look – “Hey Joe, you know your trees are growing crooked?) and the initial hundreds of thousands of dollars landscape cost of purchasing the trees, installation, labor, irrigation, and maintenance afterwards will have been wasted.

After the storm, a certified arborist should have assessed the trees immediately to determine if they can be salvaged by root pruning and staking through the next hurricane season. That will help the trees survive to grow aesthetically healthy.

This situation should have been resolved earlier. Why hasn’t the landscape company that mows the property come forward to say that straightening the trees needs to happen? It is an opportunity for landscape maintenance companies to earn more money for repairing the landscape beds that they maintain. One week after the hurricane damage, those trees should have been straightened and followed up with an arborist’s oversight to see that they were okay. Cities and counties that impose stringent development regulations prior to a storm will be able to assess the damage in their communities following the storm. They can remind builders and HOAs that new development landscapes are affected and insist on timely corrective actions.

Even if cities do not straighten their own signs.

What to Do In Your Backyard in December

Amaryllis at the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum

North Florida: Average temperature: High 65 Low 43

Average rainfall: 2.76 inches

Central Florida: Average temperature: High 72 Low 51

Average rainfall: 2.44 inches

South Florida: Average temperature: High 78 Low 62

Average rainfall: 2.56 inches

Winter arrives on December 21st .

Average first frost date: December 18th .

What to Plant

Vegetables: Beet, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, carrot, cauliflower, celery, Chinese cabbage, collard, endive, kale, kohlrabi, lettuce, mustard, onion, pea, radicchio, radish, rhubarb, rutabaga, spinach, Swiss chard and turnip.

Flowers: Ageratum, alyssum, baby's breath, black-eyed Susan, bush daisy, calendula, California poppy, camellia. candytuft, carnation, cat's whiskers, Christmas cactus, chrysanthemum, cleome, cornflower, cyclamen, delphinium, dianthus, dusty miller, firespike, foxglove, gaillardia, geranium, gloxinia. goldenrod, heliotrope, hollyhocks, Iceland poppy, impatiens, Johnny-jump ups, larkspur, lobelia, ornamental cabbage & kale, pansy, petunia, phlox, salvia, shasta daisy, snapdragon, stock, sweet pea, verbena, viola and wax begonias.

Herbs: anise, arugula, basil, borage, chive, cardamon, chervil, cilantro, coriander, dill, fennel, garlic, ginger, lavender, lemon balm, lovage, Mexican tarragon, mint, nasturtium, oregano, parsley, rosemary, sage, sweet marjoram, thyme and watercress.

Bulbs: African iris, amaryllis, anemone, bulbine, crinum, day lily, rain lily, ranunculus, society garlic, spider lily and narcissus; refrigerated Dutch iris, tulips, daffodils, hyacinths and similar bulbs needing a cold treatment before flowering.

Lawn care

• Walk yards on a weekly basis. Look for disease and insect damage.

• Water restrictions for most counties throughout Florida are in place.

• Cooler temperatures mean that irrigation 1x a week is all turfgrass and landscapes need.

• If temperatures average 70 degrees, turf will only need 1 inch of water every ten to fourteen days.

• Feeding time is over but iron or minor nutrients can be applied to keep the lawn green.

• If Brown or Large Patch fungus is affecting St. Augustine & zoysia lawns, allow area to dry out and control future outbreaks with a fungicide.

• If lawn has large weedy areas; remove and add new sod or plugs.

• Use spot weed control techniques for small patches of weeds.

• Mowing can be reduced to every other week in most landscapes.

• Mow the lawn at the normal height to continue a uniform look and control weeds.

• Lawn insects are less active at this time and insecticides may not be needed.

• Zoysia lawns often turn brown with cooler temperatures. This is normal.

• Keep lawn mower blades sharp and at their year-round height, mow as needed.

• Ryegrass seed can be sown now.

• Clean and sharpen power and garden equipment before winter storage.

• Rake fallen leaves from lawns and add to the compost pile.

• Fruit and vegetable gardening

• Helene and Milton above average rainfall totals caused early decline of many crops; remove and replant.

• Be ready to have frost blankets on hand before a freeze is announced.

• Warm season planting time is over, replant with cool season vegetables.

• Small but successive plantings guarantee continual harvests.

• It is too late for new tomatoes, peppers & eggplants, replant in March.

• Continue herb plantings in ground or in containers; they love the cool weather.

• Harvest herbs frequently to encourage fresh growth; preserve or share extras.

• If caterpillars and mites have been heavy feeders; control with natural sprays.

• Start seeds of the cool season crops as needed to have transplants available.

• Select vining crops to trellis and obtain the most from garden plots.

• Gardeners with limited space can grow their favorite vegetables in large containers.

• Add more garden soil to containers and raised beds, no need to remove older soil.

• Feed vegetable gardens every 3 to 4 weeks with composted manure or a general fertilizer.

• Feed container plantings every other week or use a slow release fertilizer as labeled.

• Feeding time is over for all fruiting trees, shrubs and vines, feed again in March.

• December is good time to taste-test citrus varieties to find out what you would like to grow. X

• Observe watering rules. 1 inch of water a week is all that your lawns and landscapes need.

• Plantings need less water during the cool weather; water when the surface soil begins to dry.

• Add new cold tolerant fruits to the landscape; delay tropical fruit plantings until spring.

• Delay deciduous fruit tree prunings until next month, citrus pruning until mid-February.

• Peach trees may start flowering but don’t worry there are plenty of buds for normal fruit set.

• Keep frost blankets handy to protect cold sensitive crops from frosts and freezes.

• Irrigate a day or two before a freeze, but not during a freeze.

Landscape

• If temperatures average 80 degrees or more, hand water containers 2x a week.

• Do not commit ‘crape murder.’ Crapemyrtles do not need to be hacked back.

• Crapemyrtles need to only have spent blooms trimmed, limbs growing skewed near other limbs, or if smaller than your pinkie. Trim or rub off suckers.

• Incorporate organic matter with older annual beds and sandy soils to encourage plant vigor.

• Add holiday poinsettias to the landscape in their pots to easily remove during extreme cold.

• Fertilize annual flowers monthly or use a slow release fertilizer as labeled.

• Apply a slow-release fertilizer to container plantings for winter feeding.

• Winter is a stress free time to add hardy trees, shrubs and ground covers to the landscape.

• Do not prune azaleas, camellias, or hydrangeas until after Spring blooms decline.

• Camellias bloom throughout winter; select and plant your favorite colors

• Pruning time is over for most plants; out of bounds shoots and suckers can be removed as needed.

• Feeding time is over for all trees, shrubs and vines.

• Established trees and shrubs can often go several weeks without irrigation.

• Add mulch to keep 3” to 4” levels. Keep mulch away from the base of plants and trees.

• Hurry to plant wildflower gardens to have blooms for spring.

• Control winter seasonal weeds by hand-pulling or correct herbicide.

• Use the cooler weather to transplant trees and shrubs, delay transplanting palms until Spring.

• Check and adjust supports holding trees and palms in an upright position as needed.

• Old soil from containers can be tilled into established gardens

• Add wood chips from tree removal to compost piles or use them as a light mulch.

• Turn compost piles at least monthly to speed the process.

• Divide and replant perennials.

• Encourage wildlife by adding a bird feeder and water feature to landscape.

• Repair and repaint bird houses, landscape furniture and fences.

• Frosts or freezes could arrive at any time; be ready to protect your cold sensitive plants with frost blankets and/or incandescent light bulbs, old-fashioned Christmas lights, not LED lights.

Foliage & house plant care

• Obtain your poinsettias early to enjoy a full season of color.

• Give holiday plants a cool bright location away from air vents.

• Don’t be surprised if new Christmas cactus drop their buds; they will bloom better next year.

• Over-watering Christmas & holiday cactus can cause them to rot; wait until the surface dries.

• Start paper white narcissus and amaryllis bulbs for gifts and winter blooms.

• Replace declining foliage plants with new greenery.

• Move cold sensitive plants from pool enclosures and patios to a warmer location.

• Remove yellow leaves from plants affected by cold but do not cut back till Spring.

• Check for water needs frequently; thoroughly moisten when the surface soil begins to dry.

• Wash foliage with a mild soap solution to remove dust and control pests.

• Subscribe to my free newsletter In Your Backyard on www.she-consulting.com