Florida Botanical Gardens offers inspiration, guidance for residential backyards

LARGO, Fla. - Looking for inspiration for your home garden or wanting to visit a tropical oasis? Well, Florida Botanical Gardens in Pinellas is the place to go. 

Located on the east edge of McKay Creek, it offers a wide variety of different species in its different gardens. 

“The wedding garden is probably the center feature of this facility,” stated Steve Robinson, commercial horticultural agent for Pinellas County. He added, “It’s an enclosed wall themed system in there, and within the wedding garden, there are subset gardens.”

Other venues you can experience include the palm garden, tropical garden, and native plant section. The botanical garden tries to operate as close to a self-sustained garden as possible, meaning it relies heavily on rainfall.

“We’re at a heat stress time of the year, we’re now in early mid-July and we haven’t had rain in two to three weeks to today. We are going to see the heartiest of all those plants, both native and exotic, that can continue to bloom and provide color,” explained Robinson.

Some of the plants you can see in bloom this time of year include crepe myrtles, firebush, and silver buttonwoods. 

Robinson recommends coming here to take notes.

“What’s really good is to bring a camera with them and just take pictures or videos as you walk through here. Nearly every plant will have a title or its name and genus species,” stated Robinson.

Being able to see how these plants act throughout the year will help you with planning and caring for your home garden. 

“Look at the palette, the number of plants you can plant here, and they’re not all native and not all exotic but when you blend them together you get a nice mixture so you have a continuous flowering cycle and growing cycle” exclaimed Robinson. 

Florida’s Botanical Gardens in Pinellas in open almost every day of the year and admission is free.

LINK: Click here for more information.