Avant Gardens: A Passion for Art Gardening : Avant Gardens

Gardening in Florida is like no other place. My Master Gardener teacher, Jim Moll of the Pasco County extension, taught us that Florida is basically a desert surrounded by great bodies of water… it’s on the same latitude as the major deserts of the Earth. We are just lucky to get so much moisture. But, sometimes it’s too much. And the heat and sun can be brutal. Zone 9 is a weird space because it actually goes across Texas to California and hugs the coast all the way up to Washington state! Anyone can tell you that that means a lot of diversity and many of the plants designated as zone 9 simply won’t grow here.

I’ve been gardening with failures and successes in Zone 9 for twenty years. Let me share with you what works, and what doesn’t as I had to learn things the hard way being a transplant myself from New Jersey zone 6.