MICHAEL SPENCER

Michael Spencer's Make It Green appears in At Home Neapolitan. He writes about landscaping design.

Michael Spencer's Make It Green focuses on gardening and landscaping in Southwest Florida. His column appears on Friday in Neapolitan.

Michael Spencer's Make It Green columnist appears Friday in Neapolitan.

The Thought Experiment was fondly regarded by Albert Einstein, giving him the perspicacity to develop his more famous theories. Based on the results that one sees casually looking around, Planting Design is apparently as complex as, say, Special Relativity. Your ...

This is normally a column about my life's work: garden design. I am never short of finding ways to help my readers be better designers, and I remain grateful for the opportunity these past three and a half years.

Our gardening projects, large or small, can just seem so overwhelming. Fortunately, resolving design issues and demonstrating a spectacular choice of plants is a skill that you can acquire. We want a creative and exciting design. Design Process is how ...

Ever noticed how fashion goes in and out of style? There's no apparent reason, really. "Oh! How fresh!" And that's about how fashion changes are described.

Over the past few years, I’ve dug narrow paths ad hoc, as I planted. Not a good way to go and yet here I am again, time to plant, and the access paths are still not in. And will not ...

The notion of eating — and growing — locally is all the rage these days. In her bestseller “The Art of Simple Food,” Alice Waters points out that many “fruits and vegetables have almost disappeared from commerce.” Those uncommon foods, ...

Yes, I know, my Yankee readers will scoff, but if you’ve been in Florida for decades you noticed that there has been a bit of fall in the air. How do I know? Been here before? And, yes, the calendar. ...

I am driven to help people become successful gardeners. But is it even possible? Of course. It is a simple matter of making mountains of opaque botanical data accessible to every gardener, and in a useful format that helps build ...

Two things are immediately noticeable in Hawaii. ’Americanization’ is expected, of course, but the fawning emphasis on indigenous Hawaiian culture is a troubling over-reach. Let me explain. There are a series of world-class telescopes at La Silla, on the Atacama ...

Our green world is simple. Learning how the world appears to each species is our Holy Grail and much easier to conjure, though it must be said that even this tests many wannabe gardeners. Still, this is our aspiration: “In ...

Many people who write me have a pool in the rear of a subdivision ranch home. I am frequently asked how to plant around the pool screen enclosure. You cannot choose plants without knowing how the property functions, because you ...

Before grad school, I had a sneering attitude towards design, thinking that ’designers’ were silly people spending far too much time ’feeling’ how to decorate. I do bump into this attitude now, sometimes, mostly in annoying and testing clients. It’s ...

Readers: Summer is a good time to experiment a bit and to wander off the garden path. I’m grateful for this space, and for the warm reception to this series. Here’s part three; next week, the series concludes with learning ...

What would be better than eating those “Yankee fruits” you remember from up North? The answer is simple: growing and eating them down here, that’s what — peaches and plums and blackberries, right here in Naples, along with dozens of ...

I entered a science fair in junior high by creating a computer that could differentiate common plants when you entered appropriate data. Since then, my Plant Book has grown in scale and scope, and is now fully computerized. My love ...

I planned a two-part story that has blossomed into something very different; I hope you enjoy it. It may explain better my views on land and its design.

Readers: Suzie and I are headed to the Hawaiian Islands, where I spent four years as a very young boy before Statehood. I will tour all of the gardens, of course, taking photos for my book. Have you been to ...

Native to Fiji in the South Pacific, the Acalypha — better known as copperleaf — group of plants has the most colorful foliage I’ve ever seen. They can turn your garden into a spectacular, unending kaleidoscope of color. Under perfect ...

Sometimes, things that just seem to “make sense” are actually quite senseless, and that’s where we start this week. Case in point is the move to further limit the use of fertilizers for ornamental plantings. That’s why the Collier Commission ...

Regular readers will remember last year’s struggle here at Peace and Plenty to extend the vegetable growing season. Tomatoes, for example, are a 90-day plant; bringing fruit to the table Dec. 15 means sowing seed Sept. 15. Big problem! The ...

Is there any single tool for the serious gardener more useful than a potting bench with plenty of room for all of your gardening activities? Nothing is better. And, building your own can be easier than you think.

Surely few plants are as evocative as ferns. Upon hearing the word, I see a tropical wonderland filled with all sorts of green goodies populating the ground, and filling every possible spot of forest deadfall. They are a mightily adaptable ...

Sometimes, my passion for vines gets me in trouble with Suzie. I have limited room on the pergola here at Peace and Plenty, so I have removed the clerodendrum and passion vine to make room for new residents. And what ...

Imagine for a moment that you are looking at every kind of living creature on earth. Plants. Fungus. Fish. Bears. Bacteria. Everything. Nobody really knows how many species are currently living on Earth. Some estimate more than 2 million unique ...

Guess what gardening chores your Design Pundit simply doesn’t like to do? ’All of them’? No: Anything that makes for a sweaty DP is to be avoided. True, this answer has a disingenuous ring to it. All of those tasks ...

Imagine that you are living in 18th century Europe and that you have every plant in the world on the table before you, with hundreds of new ones arriving every year. It is your task to discover a useful way ...

There is but one way for your Design Pundit to learn reader reaction to columns, and that’s the quantity of e-mail — always welcome — or phone calls. Of more than 150 columns, two were especially appreciated by my readers. ...

It’s a reasonable question, too, especially from many of my homeowner association clients, all of whom try to do a good job taking care of hundreds of thousands of dollars in planting improvements. They are handicapped by lack of knowledge ...

Your design pundit is a sometimes curmudgeonly design pundit, as many of my regular readers have observed. Why? Because there are some things in our built environment that make your DP go off the deep end, that’s why. Let’s speak ...

What is the value of common area planting improvements? For private homes or communities, the answer is relatively simple. Certainly the sense of quality and endurance gained by residents is important. And sure, it looks nice. Keep in mind, though, ...

This week, a few wonderful flowering plants for March, plus some thoughts on why we suffer in our gardens. Let’s start with everyone’s favorite, the bird of paradise; this is about as tough and rewarding a plant as one can ...

How is it possible for a vegetarian to get fat? Worse: what about a vegan, who eschews all animal products? (Suzie is so confirmed as a vegan that she will neither eat honey nor wear silk. We are against bee ...

Does our hot tropical summer keep us out of the garden like a cold Minnesota winter? I do like to think so, but then comes our glorious winter and I learn something profound about myself: As it turns out, it’s ...

Does our hot tropical summer keep us out of the garden like a cold Minnesota winter? I do like to think so, but then comes our glorious winter and I learn something profound about myself: As it turns out, it’s ...

Here we go again: another bout of extreme temperatures, this time quite early in December. Our freeze last year was in mid-January 2010, and, here at Peace and Plenty, it was much colder. More on that in a minute.

There are at least two ways to do a yoga practice — three, actually. Disposing of the first, which is more or less the way I have been practicing these past few years: go to class four times per week. ...

’Tis the season of introspection, assessment and — wait for it — family, gathering at year’s end. They are bumping into one another. Many conversations happen at once, catching up, each with the other, without letting Aunt Emma’s irritating facial ...

About this time of the year your Design Pundit’s calendar becomes quite full. Why? Bewildered landscape committees or HOA presidents want to know how to wrestle the landscape maintenance budget, which is often one of the biggest single annual items; ...

Now: lots of people wonder why we bother with the scientific names of plants. Why say Trachelospermum asiaticum when Asian Jasmine is so much easier to remember and pronounce? Some of the “old-time” gardeners — the folks who have the ...

Over the years, your Design Pundit has focused on form and function in planting design; the mantra of logical and defensible planting schemes has been a central theme. Now comes an e-mail from a reader, asking “Isn’t there room for ...

What tops your Christmas or Easter salad better than wondrous, garden-fresh tomatoes from your own backyard? Nothing, that’s what. And if you are intrigued by tales of glorious fresh tomatoes that can be grown nearly year-round in Florida but have ...

What’s blooming in September? That kind of talk sure gets the Design Pundit’s engine running. Do you know what else gets him going? Flowering vines, that’s what.