Pine Island Tropicals and FruitScapes slowly recovering from Hurricane Ian

By PAULETTE LeBLANC pleblanc@breezenewspapers com

Pine Island Tropicals and FruitScapes owner Donna

Hurricane Ian has been quite a slow process, for her and her husband Gary, as they were closed for almost a month after the storm Having lost approximately half of their botanical gardens as well as many of their fruit trees has left the pair scrambling to salvage anything they can

“What we’re trying to do now is cultivate any of those varieties that we can salvage particularly the heliconias and gingers,” Schneider said

In addition to trying to maintain the business, Schneider said there is a 100-foot mahogany tree still down from the storm. In this type of industry, being without irrigation, a well-pump or an acid injector (all of which were lost during the hurricane) can make every day a challenge of its own Even some of the live products they were able to salvage took a turn and

See RECOVERING, page 16

Donna Schneider at Pine Island Tropicals and FruitScapes

PHOTO PROVIDED commitment from the organization to assist Pine Island “Lions Club International is doing two things one, come roughly mid-July, they’ve announced they’re going to donate $10,000 in building supplies they said their second donation after that, with a date to be determined, they are going to help us on this shed mission To date, we’ve already spent over $38,000 building sheds for the island that’s in conjunction with Pathfinder The Greater Pine Island Alliance donated $15 (thousand), the Hookers donated $12,500 we’re very grateful that

See GPIA, page 14