Flowering Shrubs For Florida Gardens 



By E. P. Powell, 



Sorrento 

 Fla. 



NOW IS THE PLANTING SEASON FOR THIS FLOWERY SOUTHLAND — 

 OPPORTUNITIES FOR MAKING THE WINTER HOME A GARDEN OF BEAUTY 



Florida gardens may be planted with shrubbery at this time of 

 the year and will give flowers immediately 



IN FLORIDA shrubs never get tired of 

 blossoming, and some of them, like the 

 redbud, are not satisfied without blos- 

 soming two or three times consecu- 

 tively. The crepe myrtle will not stop 

 short of continuous bloom for three or four 

 months in a year. The hibiscus obeys no 

 stop orders short of a couple of frosts; and 

 they must be hard ones at that. 



Most of the Florida shrubs begin to 

 blossom when not more than a foot high, 

 and then, like the magnificent sage tree, 

 a huge shrub, they are nearly all the time 

 in flower, until they are fifteen or twenty 

 feet high. They have the advantage of 

 long seasons, and almost no winter — 

 hardly enough to give them a rest. That 

 is the peculiarity of these Florida bushes, 

 — they rarely do go to sleep. Oranges 

 lose their calendar, and are likely to break 

 out into blossom at any time, or all of the 

 time. Plums are liable to set fruit in 

 January, or in June, as likely as to ad- 

 here to their regular season, which is 

 March. 



Very few of our shrubs will do well before 

 there have been two or three years of soil- 

 making. This is owing to the fact that 

 Florida has been burned over annually for 

 more than a hundred years, and the deposit 

 of humus, which naturally would be very 

 great, has been prevented, except in the 

 hollows and the lake edges. The task is, 

 however, not so very great, when we remem- 

 ber that the cow pea will grow from ten to 

 fifteen feet in three months, and the velvet 

 bean will grow sixty feet in about the same 

 time. This permits us to mow one or two 

 crops of hay from either of these legumes, 



and later plow under the stubble and a good 

 deal besides. These nitrogen gatherers 

 will soon make a splendid deposit of humus, 

 enriched with nitrogen and not a little 

 besides. Florida has a lime deposit, mostly 

 thirty feet below the sandy surface. We 

 buy our lime here by the car 

 load, and apply it freely. 



I am not particular where 

 I plant my shrubs, for if de- 

 cently fed they will prove re- 

 sponsive everywhere. Plant 

 nearly every thing when the 

 leaves are off, for really there 

 is a winter (that is, a period of 

 rest) here just as there is in the 

 North. It is shorter, and ven- 

 tures only to finger frost two 

 or three times in midwinter; 

 but deciduous leaves do fall; 

 and they should all be raked 

 into compost piles and saved. 

 Weeds should not be allowed 

 to dry up, but at all times piled 

 up. You can plant nearly 

 everything from about the last 

 of October until March, even oranges and 

 figs and other semi-tropicals, which makes 

 it quite possible for the winter tourist from 

 theNorth to plantout shrubs after hecomes 

 down, say in this present month. But 

 I often find it convenient to move shrubs 

 at other seasons, skipping only the very 

 hottest weather of June and July. As 

 summer is our rainy season a shrub is 

 likely to be kept well soaked after moving. 

 If I were to select a half dozen of what 

 might be called absolutely wonderful shrubs 

 I should begin with one very common at the 

 North, and known as redbud. There it 

 blossoms about the last of April. Here in 

 Florida it is a January shrub, and if properly 

 trained, becomes a small tree. We find 

 it on the river bottoms and marshy lake 

 edges, but it is of very little importance 

 until transferred to our lawns. 



It takes some little time to adjust its 

 root formation to cultivation; as does 

 everything else here. That is if you want a 

 shrub or tree to thrive in this soil and cli- 

 mate you must give it plenty of time, and 

 then you must first of all help it to make a 

 big underground development before 

 you urge a large limb growth. If you 

 force the upper part of the plant to develop 

 too rapidly, you are liable some hot day 

 to find the rootlets unable to keep pace. 

 This is so with oranges as well as with 

 strictly flowering bushes, which makes 

 mulching all important. At any rate do 

 not worry if your new plants do not grow 

 rapidly; only make sure their roots are 

 growing. 



Your red bud must have nursing and 

 watering and mulching for three or four 



186 



years, and then it becomes a mass of 

 bloom twenty feet in diameter and fifteen 

 in height. What is more, it will hardly 

 close its first blooming (which like that 

 at the North is before any leafage) when a 

 second development of blossoms takes 

 place, as full as the first. During this 

 time the small rich leaves are forming, and 

 all up and down the body and large limbs 

 there are little fresh shoots. When the 

 second bloom is just dropping, all over 

 these body shoots comes a third set of buds 

 and I am inclined to think this is the most 

 beautiful bloom of all. I am somewhat 

 enthusiastic over this marvelous American 

 bush. In the North it reaches up superbly, 

 and blooms profusely; but here every limb 

 droops, with a fine sweep of weeping. 



The hawthorn I place next; not only for 

 its sweetness of bloom, but because its 

 drooping propensity is exquisitely grace- 

 ful. It needs somebody around, with a 

 knife and good trimming sense, to make 

 something very fine of this tree. To add 

 to the value put a few grafts of Northern 

 apples into the middle of the top. I do not 

 say that these will always bear fruit, but 

 if you try the King David or Henry Clay 

 or Red Astrachan, you are pretty likely 

 to get returns, provided the tree is well 

 mulched, and the root system is first well 

 developed. The hawthorn is found wild 

 here, everywhere about the pine woods and 

 by the street sides. The fragrance very 

 much surpasses that of the Northern sorts. 



I like the elderberry of the North so 

 much that I am delighted to find it very 



The redbud (Cercis) is a continuous bloom in the 

 south, but takes a little time to become established 



