Riverland Nursery Participates in
SFWMD's Xtreme Yard Makeover

You've probably heard of "Extreme Makeover Home Edition." Well, in Southwest Florida there was no Ty Pennington and no "move that bus," but there was a monster makeover.
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Xtreme Yard Makeover brought together volunteers from more than 35 organizations who descended on the lawn of a Naples home to tear it up and put together a water-efficient, drought tolerant landscape. For six weeks, they worked to take a landscaped-challenged yard and turned it into a Florida friendly yard.

"When we went to our current water restrictions, the question that kept coming up was how can we have a beautiful yard and still conserve water. We thought the best way to do it was to show them," said Judy Haner, a spokeswoman from South Florida Water Management District's Big Cypress Basin.

"We thought why don't we just pick out a yard and show people what they can do to conserve water in a yard."

And that's exactly what they did. They found a yard riddled with problems from dying grass, to greenery that needed more water, to trees that were close to power lines.

Volunteers from irrigation companies, nurseries, landscape companies and more put together a yard that features drought-tolerant empire grass and more than 200 native plants such as dune daisies, wild coffee, fire bush, penta, red coco plum and fiddlewood.

"Fiddlewood is a little known plant and it's native and it's beautiful," Haner said.

The empire turf uses one-third less water and one-fifth less fertilizer than regular grass, said John Kiefer of the Sustainable Landscape Council.

Under the turf, a drip irrigation system was installed that waters plants from beneath the soil cutting down on evaporation, water lost from the wind and even weeds.

A rain sensor with an evapo-ration-transpiration meter was installed to regulate the amount of water based on the plant's need.

Kevin O'Brien of Hunter Industries said the meters cost about $850 plus installation, much more than the normal $200 for a regular meter, but in the long run it saves money.

"It would pay the homeowner back in less than a year," O'Brien said. "There's a savings of 40 to 70 percent in water supplies."

Sen. Burt Saunders, R-Naples, came to view the yard makeover during its debut. He said he'd like to do this to his own lawn at his Naples home.

"We're now beyond the age of cheap energy and cheap water and we all have to conserve with everything we do," Saunders said. "This saves a tremendous amount of water, but it's still very attractive."

South Florida Water Management District Governing Board Member Charles Dauray said it would be great if other homeowners did this too.

"This property, used properly, will save 75,000 gallons of water a year," Dauray said. "If everybody say in Lee County did this, imagine how much water we would save."

Daphne Vosey was the lucky recipient of the Xtreme Yard Makeover.

"I was surprised and shocked when they told me and I said 'OK, what's the catch?'"

But there was no catch. Haney said Vosey's yard was chosen because it was in a high visibility area on Trail Boulevard parallel to Tamiami Trail, and because it was a typical landscape challenged lawn that could benefit from a yard makeover.

Standing in her finished yard, Vosey, who has lived in the house since 1986, was amazed at the results.

"We didn't expect it to be on this large of a scale," she said. "It's just phenomenal."