Across Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street from a cemetery, next door to Squeaky's Pool Room, in a scruffy stretch of St. Petersburg's Midtown neighborhood, rows of Sisyrinchium atlanticum blossom in the midday sun.
They could change Florida's future.
Quite a big promise for a few pots of little old blue-eyed grass, actually more an iris than a true grass. On this day, in the new native-plants nursery Twigs & Leaves, the blue-eyed grass is living up to its reputation as a favorite for honeybees. They swarm the small purple flowers, their pollen sacs bulging and bright orange.
Blue-eyed grass is a plant that is native to Florida, accustomed to its alternating bouts of heat, cold, drought and drenching rains. Partners Philippe Piquet and Michael Manlowe sell only native Florida plants from Twigs & Leaves, which has its grand opening on Monday (May 1).
They are part of a growing movement to live green, to reduce energy consumption in Florida, a state under extreme growth pressures — in essence a giant swamp that is being drained day by day so that we all can live here. The call for green living is not just the mantra of Democrats and environmental activists; the ethos is being embraced by local politicians from both parties. This adoption of the hippie creed "Think globally, act locally" is finding new fertile ground in city and county governments like Sarasota's, which mandates green-building techniques and limits the amount of irrigated lawn homeowners can plant, and in civic groups like the Council of Neighborhood Associations in St. Petersburg, which is hosting the first Pinellas Living Green Expo in June.
Piquet and Manlowe, transplants from San Francisco, marvel at the diversity of Florida's native flora, much richer than California's but more rare. Most of this state has been planted over with non-native St. Augustine lawns, hibiscus flowers and other water-sucking but beautiful plants that you typically find at Lowe's, Home Depot or many local nurseries.
Not at Twigs & Leaves though, believed to be the first all-native retail nursery in Pinellas County. (Wilcox Nursery in Largo has a large selection of native plants but is not exclusive to them.) Here you'll find plants that once dominated the peninsula's landscape: Sea grape, buttonwood, sea lavender, muhly grass and pigeon plum. And already their clientele are surprising them. Preppies, not Birkenstocks. One buyer drove up in a Hummer.
"We're reinventing Florida," Manlowe said.
The results of growth gone mad are evident throughout Florida. Water shortages have forced the construction of an inefficient desalination plant in Tampa, a giant at-grade reservoir to hold rainwater in Hillsborough and talk about the need for a second one. Gasoline is hitting $3 a gallon — again. No Florida community has enough money on hand to build enough roads for all the cars and trucks and SUVs in this state. Mass transit systems, such as Hartline in Hillsborough, struggle to serve sprawled population centers instead of compact urban enclaves.
On a larger scale, of course, there are the debates over greenhouse gases, global warming, drilling for oil in Alaska and the Kyoto protocols. The traditional political matrix on the environment strictly followed partisan guidelines: Democrats hewed to activists whose gloom-and-doom stories repelled much of the public, while Republicans chose to fight further environmental regulation to a stalemate rather than come up with their own solution.
The answer, for an increasing number of governments, builders groups and civic associations, is green building. The idea encompasses everything from state-of-the-art insulations, natural lighting and tankless water heaters to landscaping requirements that minimize watering and mowing.
The new living-green strategy is much more grassroots-oriented and consumer-friendly. Consider the sales pitch for the upcoming Pinellas event: "We are most interested in Info Sessions that build enthusiasm among attendees for sustainable living, rather than ones that overwhelm them with information about the unsustainability of the American lifestyle."
Don't think the potential for environmental issues to cut a new way has gone unnoticed, especially by some Republicans. After all, polling pretty consistently shows that as much as 70 percent of the U.S. public says they side with environmentalists.
The vast majority "support environmental goals, and that includes a huge number of Republicans," said Samuel Thernstrom, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and former speechwriter for New York Gov. George Pataki and the White House Council on Environmental Quality. "We all enjoy the benefits that a clean, high-quality environment brings."
Last year, Thernstrom wrote an article exhorting Republicans to create a new environmental agenda and wrest the issue from Democrats the way they've tried to do so with education, also once the sole province of Democrats.
His suggestion has not been heeded, due both to partisan gridlock in Washington and President Bush's disinclination to use his bully pulpit to address the environment.
That pushes the issue down to lower governments, where change is easier.
"The partisan problem is not as severe at the state and local level," Thernstrom said.
Take Florida as an example. The first government to adopt green-building guidelines was Gainesville, a college town that is about as liberal Democrat as you will find in this state. The second was Sarasota, where Republican voters dwarf Democrats, 48 percent to 31 percent.
Sarasota County is about five to 10 years ahead of Pinellas and Hillsborough in adopting green-building ordinances and developing a market for green products. In 1994, it built a demonstration house packed with affordable energy-saving construction methods and appliances. It added a green commercial demonstration site, Twin Lakes, in 2005. The two buildings now used for county government offices feature, according to Sarasota County officials, "Florida-friendly landscaping and erosion and sedimentation control; water efficiency in landscape design and interior water usage; energy-efficient heating, ventilation and air conditioning; the use of recyclable materials throughout the building; and low-emitting materials and natural lighting in the interior spaces."
And in July 2005, Sarasota's North Library won a gold rating from the U.S. Green Building Council, the highest level of energy conservation. Completed in 2004, the library was only the fourth building in Florida to earn the gold seal. (Tampa Bay's best known green building is probably the new WMNF radio studios on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Tampa, which used energy saving designs, natural lighting and xeriscaping that is maintained by the Florida Native Plants Society.)
With government construction leading the way, the private market eventually caught up. Today, such private projects as the Girl Scouts Headquarters and Whole Foods Market in downtown Sarasota have been built to green standards, and another 40 or so green construction projects are being discussed or planned.
What Sarasota has created, said Jodi Johns, its sustainability manager, is an awareness for the many energy-saving products already available and local markets for them. (You read that right: sustainability manager. That's a position that, to our knowledge, doesn't yet exist in Hillsborough or Pinellas counties.)
Sarasota has a unique outlet for green products, Eco-$mart, a store with catalog and online sales that serves as a clearinghouse for everything from earth-friendly flooring to home security. Sarasota and Manatee counties have two all-native plant nurseries.
But perhaps the most powerful tool in Sarasota's green-building ordinances is how it rewards those who choose to build environmentally. If a project meets either the Florida Green Building Coalition or the U.S. Green Building LEEDS guidelines, permitting for that construction is fast-tracked. What is normally a five- to eight-week process becomes a guarantee of just two days.
Johns said, "Time is money for builders."
Little things like speeded-up permitting can make a big difference. Just as little changes in the plants around your house can make a big impact over the years.
Piquet of Twigs & Leaves points out that trees like the sea grape are not only drought-tolerant but wind-resistant, bowing but not breaking in all but the strongest hurricanes. "If you plant wind-resistant trees, they protect the house and create shade that cuts down on your AC costs."
As he provides a guided tour through the nursery, he takes aim at the old saw that Florida native plants are dull, lifeless and without color. There are the vivid purples of the blue-eyed grass; the canary yellows of the state wildflower, coreopsis; and the black-on-yellow of the Black-eyed Susan. Florida natives also fill the other senses; crunch up a leaf of the Florida Anise and smell strong black licorice.
Native planting is just part of the equation, said Karl Nurse, the neighborhood leader in St. Petersburg who came up with the idea for the Pinellas Living Green Expo.
"As I began talking with people, I saw they all understood we need to use less energy but have no way to get there," Nurse said. The Expo "is a way to connect those dots. It's a mainstream event that will help people address an economic pressure."
Nurse started out by recruiting a steering committee and then signing on some big organizations, like the city of St. Petersburg and Progress Energy. Just what is an electric utility doing in an endeavor aimed at getting people to use less energy? Nurse explained that providing new energy resources to meet increased demand is more expensive than providing the existing electricity that Progress can already generate. It is cost-efficient to get users to conserve.
Nurse looked south to Sarasota for inspiration.
"They really grew an industry," he said. Sarasota has 20 green builders, for instance. Pinellas has two.
St. Petersburg is a leader in Tampa Bay, even if it is a decade behind Sarasota. Mayor Rick Baker last year signed on to the Green Cities Initiative, which calls for 281 specific actions to make government and its regulations more environmentally friendly. In Tampa, city officials met in the last 30 days with activists Liz Taylor and Deborah Cope to hear their pitch about incorporating green building regulations into the city's codes.
But for every step forward, there are some back. In St. Petersburg, Nurse said, an initial audit of how green the city is shows that it is meeting just 42 of the 281 Green Cities objectives. The City Council recently abandoned yet another attempt to institute mandatory curbside recycling, leaving St. Petersburg as the largest in Florida without the service. Even existing city regulations inadvertently create problems: Twigs & Leaves had to plant traditional lawn sod in its on-property retention pond instead of native plants that would not require mowing (and the attendant air pollution and gasoline costs that come with cutting the grass).
Still, Tampa Bay is finally taking some substantive steps toward getting greener and restoring the environment.
"It's the one level where we can make a difference," Nurse said. "I don't think anyone believes it is going to be solved in Washington."
This article appears in Apr 26 – May 2, 2006.