Cupshaped, We lived just south of Daytona for over 20 years. We hadn't discovered OGRs, but gave up on the HTs that were sold at garden centers because they were too much work--the constant spraying required was a nightmare. Especially in the heat of summer, when you'd come in needing a blood transfusion from all the mosquito bites. We were on a barrier island, so the "soil" was almost pure sand with a thin layer of leaf litter and pine straw on top. Water & nutrients ran right through it. We found gardening with Florida natives to be a very satisfying, enviromentally friendly way to go. If you want a Florida native that will attract butterflies, get a firebush (Hamelia patens). Wonderful red-orange tube-shaped flowers are great nectar sources for most butterflies, and hummingbirds like them, too. Being a native, it should perform well--there may be a little freeze damage once in a while in Daytona, but it's good to whack the bushes back once in a while, anyway. Another great Florida native for butterflies is Wild Coffee (Psychotria nervosa). Makes a beautiful rounded bush with shiny leaves, small white flowers, and red berries. Zebra longwing butterflies LOVE it. Citrus trees act as larval food for Eastern Swallowtails (the caterpillars look like bird poop, and put out scary red antennae-type things when alarmed, but the butterflies are GORGEOUS.) The caterpillars don't eat that much, so just ignore the few chewed on leaves and wait for them to emerge in all their flying glory. And you can eat the citrus, too. Passionflower vines are larval food for zebra longwings, and have great flowers. Muhly grass is a lovely ornamental native grass that has pinkish blooms. And some of the spartina grasses are also great native ornamentals. Green Images in Christmas, Florida is a WONDERFUL native plant nursery that's not too far from Daytona. Worth a trip over there, and they should have a bunch of natives that will perform well and bring in the butterflies. Depending on your friends' soil, amendments can be tricky. If they're in a real sandy area, the soil is so coarse that it has tons of air & oxygen in it, and organics burn up so fast that you almost can't add them quickly enough to make a difference. Other places are muck (basically swamp bottom) and have much richer soil. The Florida Native Plant Society is a wonderful organization and a great source of information if you want to "go native". Natives are so much easier to grow, provide food and cover for birds and butterflies, and low maintenance to boot. Water rationing is becoming pretty common in Florida, and planting things that will deal with normal rainfall is a way to have a beautiful garden in spite of water restrictions.

Seffner isn't too far. I'll have to check out Kerby's. I had heard of it, but never been there. I might convince my daughter to make that trip with me. (I drive 110 miles a day for my job, I don't even want to make a long trip on a day off!) But it looks like a road trip might be in order. The Weed Patch sounds wonderful! The kind of place that loves roses and wants to share. That's my kind of place. Mapquest shows they are closer to Ocala than Gainesville, a shorter trip for me. I have heard other good reports about Rose Petals. They have a good list of roses on their website. Even by mail order their roses are reasonably priced. Angel Gardens is in the same area, somewhere near Gainesville. So an all day or overnight trip could be very worthwhile. Now just to convince DH we should make the drive. :) Thanks for the information. I knew you folks would know the best places!

Thanks for looking everyone! Bananatree94, Thanks for the IDs. You were definitely right on all those bird ID's and possibly the orchid ID too (I'm not sure since I dont know much about orchids!). Apparently Disney does protect their orchids, so they might have been given extra protection, but they were at least 25 feet above the ground, so I dont see how protection would be a very easy thing to accomplish! Someone ID'ed the Jubaea x Butia as a Syaragus x Butia, so it probably is just a very Butia looking Mule palm. Either way, its nice to see some palm hybrids on the property! Lzrddr, I think you might be right about that White Elephant Palm being potted. It does look like there is enough bare room underneath it for it to fit a pot. I did here that White Elephant Palms are somewhat frost tolerant and since the palm in this pic was in deep shade, its possible that it has not seen much of a frost even after last winters low temperature of 28F. Usually Orlando winters are above freezing, but they have not been so lucky with the past 2! Im sure that the Red Sealing Wax palm has to be potted up because even with heat, I dont see how they could survive last years Brutal winter. They can barely handle temperatures in the 40s! Jim, the plants definitely were one of my favorite about Disney! I was happy to see someone else taking pictures of plants so I didn't feel too alone, but plant lovers were definitely the minority! And I could definitely see why you thought the monkey's escaped, lol, the wire definitely looks like a telephone wire! -Alex

Those pics will only work for front planting as still pretty far away. On that subject ... It is not a good idea to allow large trees, which must become civilized, to grow too much without controlling their structure. When this tree has a spread of 80', you're not going to want it hanging over the driveway or punching into the house. It must be limbed up to get to a height compatible with the surroundings. But its tendency is to branch very low so limbing it up long after it should have been done means you'll have to have suffer the rest of its life with an unattractive trunk structure. The trunk should be doing its final branching fairly close to the final canopy .... not at 7' or 8' off of the ground. We see these gangly oak trunk configurations all over Florida. It is better if you start limbing it up when young so you're not stuck with the ugly form. The tiny bed under the oak is way out of proportion to the tree itself. My yellow circle is about as small as it could stand to be at its present size. Eventually, the yard will be so shaded that the grass below will not grow and you'll need to reconfigure for groundcover. Too, crotons are not the plant to put under this tree. You might consider a solid bed of flaming torch bromeliads. They like the shade and they're spectacular when they bloom. The farthest corner of bed at left of garage could stand to be enlarged a little, too and the dip removed from in front of the garage windows. As I mentioned, the shrubs below those garage windows should be trimmed to the bottom of the windows. That's true at the house too, except those windows are so low that the plants need to be changed to groundcover that doesn't grow taller than the windows. If you need a little more interest at the house you could put in something just a little taller flanking the columns only. I'm going to skip addressing the bed that surrounds the drive even though it is the subject of this thread. Maybe you could take a panning scene of that bed while standing at the center of the parking court, looking outward. Don't we wish there was some hedge or some kind of screen that blocked out most of the view of the side of neighbor's house and garage? I know I wouldn't want to see that every time I drove in the driveway.