Hurricane Irma left her mark on South Florida. Five months ago her 90 to 150 mile per hour winds destroyed tens of thousands of trees but here are some interesting survivors in Fort Myers and Naples. (Roll over each photo for the caption.)
Category: bad landscape
The Lorax Puked (Bad, Sad Trees)
I was stunned and saddened by the number of mangled Florida Live Oaks surrounding this (unnamed) business in Naples. These trees might have been planted correctly, then staked, and then guyed with wires wrapped in hose. But that was seven years ago! Stakes and other supports should be removed within six months after planting. Nearly…
Garbage Palms
Dead plants don’t bother me, if they died from natural causes. But these Cabbage palms died from ignorance. This is a little strip mall on US 41 in Fort Myers, FL. These palms have been planted for about a year and all of them are dead or dying, while the neighboring plants are surviving. I…
Crowded Confederates and Faux-meliads
Here we have a couple of peculiar landscape treatments that caught my eye. Confederate Jasmine is an excellent landscape plant and the variegated version grows a little slower than the green…but it is still a vine that will naturally grow ten to twelve feet high and wide. This landscaper decided to plant ten plants where…
Oak Ignorance
The line of live oaks on the left are planted along a parking lot under power lines in Cape Coral, Florida. Why? The photo on the right is the same tree, in its mature size. This monster is in Jacksonville, Fl and is estimated to be over 200 years old. Look it up in any…
Make it Fit!
Another example of short-sighted landscaping. Did the designer or landscaper know the growth habit and mature size of these plants? I suspect they went to the nursery and bought a bunch of colorful plants and determined to force them all into the same size and shape with gas shears every week. Each one of these…
How Many is Too Many?
This is a freshly planted bed of Green Island Ficus. Did the designer know the mature size of this plant? Each one will grow at least four feet wide. Why did they plant them one inch from the edge of the curb? If the landscaper thought about the plant’s eventual size they could have planted…
Crooked Oaks
These Live Oaks have been planted for over 10 years (at a car wash I frequent). Every one is crooked. The reason is they were poorly grown in the nursery. Note the above ground circling roots. These woody roots grew in circles in the pot and never escaped that spiraling shape. Instead of having normal,…
