Yard & Garden: Water Wise Winners

Winning Yards Make Water Conservation a Priority

BY MARCIA BIGGS

Every year the City of St. Petersburg presents a Community Water Wise Award to recognize a resident or business that maintains an attractive, watereffi cient landscape. For 2020, two homeowners were presented with the mosaic glass yard stepping stone in a tie. We came along for the February award presentation with Chris Claus, water conservation coordinator for the St. Petersburg Water Resources Department, and several other staffers.

“What you will see is what I believe represent the recent trends in residential landscapes – the recognition of being a part of the natural world, and self-sufficiency,” Claus told me. “We select the winners first and foremost based on how they use water in the landscape. Many will collect rainwater or stormwater, have Florida-friendly landscaping, minimize turf, use appropriate plants to attract pollinators and wildlife, and understand right plant, right place.”

Along a street of tidy bungalows in Central St. Pete, Scott Bitterli and Jasmina Janjic have transformed a tiny front yard and sizeable backyard into their own gardens of Eden, filled with fruit trees, herbs, grasses, shrubs and fl owers.

Take a stroll around and you’ll find papaya, fig, yucca, mulberry, elderberry, and sugar apple trees. In terracotta pots are lemongrass and citronella, aloe, turmeric, and ginger. Beautyberry and coffee plants off er berries for the birds, and cosmos nectar for the butterflies. Head to the back yard, past the rain cube and the compost bin to find pigeon pea, a Barbados cherry tree with pink blossoms outside the kitchen window, sunflowers, plantain, cilantro, cosmos, mint, and sage.

It’s a labor of love (and always a work in progress) for Scott, a permaculture designer, and Jasmina, who is studying to be a clinical herbalist. As a lifestyle, the couple embraces sustainable living, so they had a vision for a homestead that would not only provide them with food and medicinal herbs, but would conserve water and be benefi cial to wildlife.

When they started the project in summer of 2019, the front yard contained an oak tree and mostly grass. “For the first six months, we focused on rejuvenating the soil and creating a lively ecosystem,” said Scott. He obtained tons of city mulch (delivery by the city can be arranged), planted multiple fruit trees, drought tolerant and native pollinator plants, and a created a “keyhole” veggie garden out of salvaged red street brick. The keyhole veggie garden was inspired by urban keyhole gardens in Australia, said Jasmina.

“To build the soil in the veggie bed, we started with old oak logs from my parents’ house, added lots of compost generated on-site by collecting food scraps from local restaurants, some goat manure from a goat farm, local seaweed and homemade bio-char,” explains Scott. “Along the sidewalk, we added oak stumps to build a small retaining wall to keep soil and moisture from eroding from our yard.”

They installed drought tolerant groundcover like dune sunfl ower and sunshine mimosa to shade the soil and retain moisture. And they built and installed five 275-gallon “rain cubes” that collect water via gutters similar to rain barrels.

“We only hand water and use the rainwater whenever possible,” he added. Last fall, they started work on the backyard beds with all the same materials and techniques as the front, but focused on veggies and medicinal herbs. They also built an outdoor shower that runs off into a banana/ papaya/elderberry bed.

Tucked away in the Riviera Bay neighborhood of north St. Petersburg, it’s difficult to see Karen Lieberman’s ranch home from the street. Visitors need only look for the splashes of red and yellow blanket flowers lining the curb, or the colorful hibiscus or crotons, the pink muhly grass waving in the breeze and the tall bromeliads. Broad semi-circles made of pavers create welcome pads at the front curb with paths emanating to the back yard and the driveway.

Across the street, a similarly lush landscape resides. It’s the home of Dave Steiner, an avid home gardener who was happy to adopt his neighbor’s yard in his spare time, providing his overstock of plants and seeds, design ideas and sweat labor to transform her landscape into a similar oasis.

“It was mostly grass so I just started with a few beds,” says Steiner, as he points out a diverse array of drought tolerant and pollinator plants. Mulberry and moringa trees, beach sunflower and blanket flowers, porterweed for the bees and firecracker for the butterflies and beautyberry for the birds. Today the lawn is all gone and solar ground lights dot the front yard along the driveway leading to the front door.

The endeavor spread to the backyard, where Steiner installed a series of four olive barrels-turned-rain barrels and rigged up a gutter system and motor to allow Lieberman to hose water her beloved rose garden. He took PVC pipe and designed an underground pipe system that moved overfl ow rainwater underground to the front landscape.

“It slowly evolved that he took it all over,” says homeowner Lieberman, “and we were happy to have him.”