Pushing the Boundaries for Biodiversity in a Commercial Landscape

Urban landscape designs typically offer a fairly spare planting palette, but Heritage Park at Crane Creek, an affordable housing complex in Melbourne, Florida, is home to 189 plant species. These have been carefully identified, and nearly three quarters of them patiently sourced from FANN members all across Florida, by a development team leader who just happens to also be a passion ate native plant enthusiast: Keith Donald. Keith literally drove a truck across the state, multiple times and in all directions, to ac quire the plants he wanted for this now lifefilled landscape.

Keith and his wife, Keri, founded Steady town, a nonprofit working to care for and house the homeless in Brevard County. Steadytown partnered with Carrfour Supportive Housing, a nonprofit developer of affordable housing projects, to build 108 income-restricted apartments on 15 acres of land used for decades as an illegal dumping ground. The developers had to remove tons of debris and assure local residents that a healthy en vironment would be created. Keith took the ¨healthy environment" idea to the max, lob bying the city to allow the use native plants instead of pipes, concrete and turf to solve problems of drainage, erosion and storm water storage and treatment.

The team contracted with a landscape ar chitecture firm whose expertise with native plants was limited, but they were open to Keith’s substitutions. While there are some massed plantings – long drifts of ornamental grasses and wildflowers, for example, and tidy small plots of monoculture native groundcover; other areas, including the en tryway roundabout, are densely planted and not a bit formal. Keith’s extensive outreach helps to educate the community and engage the residents in learning about this land scape’s special qualities. Over 30 butterfly , 23 moth, 27 dragon- and damsefly and 10 native bee species have been photographed along with songbird families, wood duck families, wild turkeys with their poults, nest ing swallowtail kites, eastern cottontail rab bits, spadefoot toads and more.

The biggest challenge after planting was finding a way to maintain all this biodiver sity. A site like this is quickly destroyed by the typical mow, blow, hedge and shear crew. But there simply are not many main tenance firms that know these plants, and especially not this many species. Nor are there many developers willing to pay the considerable up front costs associated with establishing what are effectively multiple small ecosystems that one hopes will begin to somewhat self manage in 3-4 years. Meanwhile, a tremendous amount of hand weeding and exotic control is required. Fortunately, Keith was able to convince his partners to contract with FANN member Change of Greenery, a local firm providing maintenance consultation and services. It is hoped that after the first few years, the cost of maintaining this site will dramatically de crease to offset the upfront costs.

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