Plant Selection & Landscape Design - Southwest Florida Water ...

PRINCIPLE #8: MANAGE STORMWATER RUNOFF
A Florida-Friendly Landscape uses porous pavers, rain
barrels or cisterns, rain gardens, and swales and berms to
keep rainwater on site and allow it to percolate into the
ground or be captured for later use. Reducing the amount
of runoff and the chance for rainwater to wash quickly
into storm drains—carrying yard clippings, fertilizer, pesticide,
dirt, oil, and other toxins—is the goal of managing
stormwater runoff.
PRINCIPLE #9: PROTECT THE WATERFRONT
Implementing Florida-Friendly Landscaping design and
maintenance methods helps protect water bodies from pollution.
If you live on a lake, bay, river, or other water
body, keep fertilizers, pesticides, and other toxins away
from the water by preserving a 10-foot maintenance-free
zone between your landscape and the water. Do not mow,
fertilize, or apply pesticides in that area. Even if you do
not live immediately on the waterfront, the pesticides and
fertilizers you apply in your landscape affect the health of
local water bodies through a drainage system called the
watershed. The choices you make at home have much farther-reaching
consequences than you might imagine.
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FLORIDA-FRIENDLY LANDSCAPING TM GUIDE TO PLANT SELECTION AND LANDSCAPE DESIGN • 2010