A 10-Year Effort Creates a Golden Neighborhood Reward

On Tuesday, residents of the Highland Dunes Homeowners Association, a subdivision of 40 homes, gathered at the entrance at Stanley Street and Highland Dunes Way to observe the planting of a flag certifying the community park as a Florida-Friendly Landscape, Gold Level. This is the first such landscape in Nassau County to achieve this designation. Beginning almost 10 years ago, the evolution of the small 1/4-acre green space from a failed turf-grass and shrub landscape that required expensive and wasteful irrigation to a colorful, diverse, and bee/butterfly-friendly dry landscape has been a true community effort, with most of the work done by neighborhood volunteers.

When the HOA was formed with the transfer from the developer, one of the first annual meetings heard Board members and residents complaining and pondering what to do with a failing landscape in the entryway park. The irrigation well was too shallow and pumping salty water that was doing more harm than good, expensive electric bills to pump the salty water were clearly a waste of money, water-hungry turf-grass was weedy and not the correct choice for high dry sands or shady areas, and maintenance costs for weed control and mowing were a waste since the landscape was failing and unsightly anyway.

Solutions seemed out of reach. The cost of deepening the well was prohibitive, the cost of connecting to city water would compound the monthly costs for both water and electricity, plus it had already been seen that watering actually favored weeds more than anything else. One of the residents raised his hand and asked, “Why don’t we install a xeriscape?” (Xeric is Greek for “dry” and is the technical term for a dry landscape).

This question was met with a short discussion and then promptly a unanimous approval. Another resident offered to contact the Florida-Friendly Landscape (FFL) Program and see if it would provide assistance.

After a site visit an agreement was reached that, in return for design services, the HOA would commit to maintain the landscape, provide temporary irrigation for the first year to ensure successful establishment, monitor and report the success of the landscape including water usage compared to the water consumption of the previous landscape

Most of the initial installation survived and matured. Some did not. After seven years of figuring things out, parts of the landscape were ready for renewal.

As a first step, the HOA invited the Director of Nassau County UF/IFAS Extension, Dr. Taylor Clem, to walk the landscape project and offer advice. With Dr. Clem’s advice and armed with their experience, the Highland Dunes HOA made some changes. A committee of volunteers, using FFL as a reference, created a design and planting list to expand upon the original design, but add new species that were researched to confirm their ability to survive the particular challenges posed by the soils, slopes, dryness, and sun/shade conditions.

As with the original installation, an array of grasses, wildflowers, flowering shrubs, and succulents were procured directly by the HOA. Additionally, several residents contributed surplus plant material from their own landscapes and some even grew some of the new plants from native seed gathered nearby. The total investment for the renovation was about $300. All of the planting was done with volunteers from the neighborhood. Now, about one year later, the landscape is colorful and thriving.

One of the neighbors, a certified Master Gardener, asked if he would come and visit the new landscape and see if it met the criteria for being certified as a Florida-Friendly Landscape. He explained that there are three levels of such a certification, Bronze, Silver and Gold. He said a Gold rating is rare and difficult to achieve. But once again, volunteers from the neighborhood stepped forward and attacked the weeds and did their best to meet the criteria stipulated by Dr. Clem. He was pleased to award the Highland Dunes HOA the distinction of a Gold certification, and the ceremony Tuesday was to “plant” the flag that displays this designation.