Darn them YANKS! These sites might help you on your quest.

http://www.floridayards.org/fyplants/index.php

This is a great free PDF/Book put out by the state with native plant life from grasses to trees. Fairly thorough, and it has PICTURES! :)

http://www.swfwmd.state.fl.us/publications/files/waterwise_landscapes.pdf

And tell those yanks, it just wouldn't be Florida without palms and natives.

Writersblock, to really give you any suggestions we need more info. How close to the dunes? Is the area on the land side of buildings or homes or on the beach side? What zone? Here are a few suggestions for zone 10. On the dune side your choices are very limited to things like beach sunflower (does great), indian hawthorne, prickly pear (beautiful when it blooms in May), yucca, agave, seagrape and some Kalanchoe as well as sea oats of course. On the land side you have many more choices depending on how far you are from the beach. Wind is actually more of a factor than salt. Things to consider are crinum lily, ixora nora grant, geiger tree (although edges of leaves can brown with severe winds), poinciana and floss silk tree of course although larger than you want. Confederate jasmine can do well with a little protection, and surprisingly, epidendrum radicans (an orange ground orchid) does very well with some salt and wind and blooms about 5 months of the year. Foliage is always necessary though. If not palms, consider cycads. Dioon spinulosum is extremely underused and a very beautiful and interesting, tolerant plant that will last through much abuse. Of course, cardboard palm and coonties are also very tolerant of barrier island conditions. Variegated pittosporum is also a good foliage plant for the conditions.

Anna

Thanks for the suggestions, linchat. I'll certainly pass them along.

Anna, we're on the west side of AIA. There's a condo across the street, then the dune, but we're directly south of a preserve area on the beach side, so there are no tall trees to break the NE wind. Hutchinson Island is on the east coast, near Stuart. Technically we're in zone 9, but our microclimate is usually more like zone 10.

Thank you very much for the detailed list. We do have yucca, agave, crinums, ixora (they want to pull that because it froze too badly, and it is messy in the wind, always, even when flourishing; the pool stays much cleaner since they got rid of the potted ixora around it), pittosporum, and some of the units have confederate jasmine on their fences. Also some cocoplum which never looks like anything because they keep whacking it down to about 2 ft high, carissa, hawaiian schefflera (I know, I know), and lots and lots of dracena and hibiscus. The head of the garden committee has a thing for sansevieria and bird of paradise (which does very well, although the blooms are always kind of tatty).

Oleanders should do fine in that situation. Their tough as
nails and you'll get months of bloom. They should give you
some of height of a small flowering tree as well.

Thanks, stonecrabber. We do have oleanders, but between a flourishing colony of oleander moths and a weekly chainsaw massacre from the lawn crew, they don't flourish like most oleanders do here. :)

My neighbor has a Tecoma stans that seems to stand up pretty
well to wind. It grows fine with salt in the soil, I'm unsure
if it would stand salt spray. It flowers quite prolifically
for many months.

Thanks, stonecrabber. I had to look that one up, but it's very nice.