marysgardens

We live in the wintertime in one of the most beautiful places in the world and often refer to it as Paradise.

Like any place, it has its pluses and its minuses. I don’t want you all to be too envious and think we never have problems.  No place is perfect.  But this place is oceanic beautiful.

And the people are wonderful, too.

Here, it is beautiful throughout the day.

What is not as well known is that next to the ocean, we have natural botanical gardens.  Here is an example:

Often the first instinct of some when they decide to build on this land is to remove all the native brush, resulting in this look:

The ripped up roots and all the valuable top soil from the land often ends up in a landfill at a nearby dump.

Sometimes after razing the land, one does not get around to building or landscaping and the land sits barren. This reduces the food supply for our native birds and butterflies.  Invasive plants take over. The abandoned land tries to return to normal, but is overwhelmed with invasive plants like Casuarinas and Hawaiian Grape that quickly grow, leaving little space for the return of native plants.

Entomologists teach us that insects and birds cannot survive on invasive plants.  Invasive plants do not carry appropriate insects and seeds to feed our local birds and butterflies.  Their leaves and seeds are not eaten by native birds. Also, fewer insects live on these plants, thus reducing the food supply for birds and butterflies.  This is why invasive plants reproduce so quickly.  All their seeds survive for further growth because local birds and butterflies are not eating them.

Many are now realizing the values of the original native plants on our properties and are trying to be more selective about what is removed.  More often, walking pathways are cut, perhaps with a machete, and carefully selected areas are opened for driving or building. The end result is very striking.

Homes are then surrounded by beautiful, mature, native plants.  The air stays cool from the shade of native trees, birds readily find their berries and bugs to eat and butterflies abound as they dip and fly through the bush.

By staying with native plants, tens of thousands of dollars may be saved in burdensome costs for purchasing of replacement top soil, high-priced charges for replanting the land with expensive and often imported plants and costs for purchasing of numerous bags of chemical fertilizer.

In addition, keeping native plants and original top soil eliminates years of frustration that comes with paying others for landscaping ideas on how to revive land that was injured by removing all its topsoil on already nutrient-starved beach property.

A number of us are wondering if there is something that might be done to encourage those who live on land in beautiful natural areas to know their options before they raze the land and have to spend years regretting what was done.

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Now I realize how much space I need to give this baby Red Cedar to grow! It certainly pays to plan ahead.

The tree is lovely and dense.  I think that it would be best to place it in a place where privacy is desired.
Here is a close up of its branches.

 I will plant it on the north side of our house, just as my neighbor did,  but a bit farther away.

My Red Cedar in a pot, ready for planting

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What grows well under those pesky Casuarinas or Australian Pines?  (Latin names: Casuarina equisetifolia and Casuarina glauca).

Stage One

Here is what our site looked like when we started.   One could see the ocean through the Australian Pine trees, but not very well.  Although there was other vegetation, it was well hidden and certainly not flourishing.

The first year, we started to remove the Australian Pines by removing many small, baby trees.  At first, we used a machete and just cut down the 7 to 10 footers.  Then I spent a number of days pulling out smaller ones by hand, roots and all.  Most of the ones that I pulled out were three feet high or shorter.   I counted that I removed over 700 small baby Casuarina plants, by hand  while using a pickaxe to pull the root out.  It was a tiring job, but the view of the beach and the ocean was beautiful making it a pleasant work site, especially in the cool of the early morning.

Stage Two, opening up to undergrowth

After doing all this we began to see other trees emerging around the remaining Casuarinas.  Then new groundcover started to show, but not very clearly.  We got a view of the ocean.  And the baby plants got some sunlight.  But we still had more work to do.

Stage Three, New Growth

The next year, we cut down a giant Casuarina that was out in front of our house.  Now the other plants really started flourishing.  We added some Coconut Palms.  In addition, the Seagrape (Coccoloba Uvifera), Coco Plum (Chrysobalanus Icaco) and the Bay Geranium (Ambrosia hispida), among others, emerged and started to grow everywhere, on their own.  I took a series of shots below showing all the plants that now grow naturally around the old Casuarina stump.   Here they are.

Thatch Palm

Bay Cedar  (Suriana maritima)

Palmetta Palms

Bay Geranium

Coco Plum

Sea Heather

It is so wonderful to have all this diversity of plant life. The birds and butterflies like it too. They flutter from plant to plant, eating seeds and lighting on them, probably enjoying the ocean view, as do we.

You can see that I have yet to learn the name of all the plants in my front yard. This is because I did not purchase them at any nursery.  They emerged naturally, once the invasive plant was fully removed. In other words, they did not arrive in containers with plastic labels showing their names. But my neighbors are teaching me the names of these native plants.   As I learn their names, I will add them to the photos.

We recently bought two additional plants that we will be putting into the ground around our house.   They are highly recommended and are great native replacements for the Australian Pine.  They are Lignum Vitae (Gualacum sanactum) and Red Cedar (Juniperus bermudiana). We just bought one of each from our local nursery called Wonderland Gardens in Marsh Harbour.  Here is what they looked like when we bought them.

Baby Lignum Vitae

Red Cedar

These two plants are natives that like the native soil, the sunlight and the ocean salt.  According to our book from the Friends of the Environment, Abaco, Bahamas called  ” A Guide to native and Invasive Plants in Abaco”, both the Lignum Vitae and the Red Cedar plant are protected trees of the Bahamas.  We will be planting them in the next few days.  For the longest time I could not find them in the local plant nurseries and was very pleased to find them available for sale this year.  

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Sunrise under an Australian Pine in the Abacos

One way to control the problem of the proliferating Australian Pine tree in the Bahamas is to eat the seeds!

But I cannot find a single recipe calling for Australian Pine seeds.

Australian Pines line the beach of Eight Mile Bay

Unfortunately, insects in the Bahamas don’t eat them either.  Thus the pines proliferate.

Australian Pines are free to reproduce in the Bahamas because there are no people or insects in our area that eat their seeds . Hundreds of thousands of these uneaten seeds are dropping to the ground and growing spontaneously, everywhere, uneaten by either humans or insects, or even fish.  Now that is a special kind of problem, a population problem.  If we could learn to control the population of Australian Pine, then perhaps we could live happily with them, mingling in their shade, burning their wood, and crafting them into tables and chairs, as needed.

A group of researchers, mostly entomologists, are hoping to find a good set of bugs that will eat Australian Pine seeds.

I am happy to report that Australians are involved in the research project.  In my opinion, it makes sense to have them collaborate with us on this problem since they are the culprits who, several hundred years ago, sent us these trees.  I figure they ought to know a lot about them or at least might have a few pine seed recipes that they could share.

But now we have another problem.  Australians don’t necessarily have the same issue with the trees that we do, because in Australia, there are a group of insects all eating Australian Pine seeds, thus controlling the size of the Australian Pine tree population. We, on the other hand, acquired the trees without the natural controls.  This helps explain why Australians like their pines and we don’t always share their viewpoint.

Which bugs eat Australian Pine seeds and how do we get them?

Wait a minute, not so fast!  There is a bit of work to do before one takes a new bug into our environment.  For example, we have to make sure that something eats the bug and that it doesn’t become yet another invasive problem.  We also have to be sure that that bug over there in Australia is going to like the specific “Australian Pine” seed that we now have here in the Bahamas.

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