Yankee's Guide to Florida Gardening

Gardening in Florida isn't like it was up north. Here you will be growing bedding plants twelve months a year, pick your own grapefruit for Christmas, dig the tulip bulbs and put them in the refrigerator while you leave amaryllis, caladiums and dahlias in the ground all year. We have to learn a whole new pattern of seasons. Us Yankees look in vain for lilacs and blue spruce, instead we find Norfolk Island Pine and Crape Myrtle. We grow strange things like kumquats, loquats and papayas, but cherries won't grow here. When we move down here we have to learn a bunch of new and weird plants.
We are confronted with bugs that never rest and weeds that grow nonstop. We face problems like drought, poor soil, nematodes and lovebugs. But we also have opportunities to landscape every month of the year, hang orchids in the oak trees and never shovel snow again. We have to learn how to handle both the good and the bad of a subtropical backyard.
This book is to help you make that adjustment from northern gardening to the exciting, rewarding, and yes, sometimes even challenging, world of a Yankee gardening in Florida.
Welcome to your Florida backyard.