Florida Native Plant Society Blog

Rick Darke’s keynote speech at last week’s FNPS Conference was a richly layered presentation beautifully illustrated with photographs that delivered. He arrived at the conference early so he could go on one of the field trips and incorporate local information and pictures, like the one on the right.  His talk, “Liveable Florida: Native by Design," included ideas for designing in gardens, but extended beyond garden borders to suggest designs, or plans, that contribute to a more sustainable world. Although he had worked for many years at Longwood Gardens, Mr. Darke discovered that nothing from his experience there was helpful in designing his own eighth of an acre in Delaware. So he made a decision to go out into the woods there and learn directly from the source. Over the course of a year he took numerous photos of the exact same spot in in the woods, in all seasons, all kinds of weather, all times of day. The drama and visual interest of that study which was revealed through t...

When Rick Darke approaches a landscaping project, he doesn’t begin by telling anyone to start planting natives. Instead, he approaches his projects – ranging in size from miles of area along Delaware’s highways to a quarter acre home in Florida – by focusing on lifestyle, ethics, and systems. I caught up with Rick while he was aboard a train headed for one of his many presentations, this one at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn entitled: T he Art of Observation:  Finding The Extraordinary In The Ordinary Landscape . Our call dropped five times, but Rick’s passion for creative, ecologically sound gardening could not be intercepted by a wireless signal! Rick’s frustration with pushing native plants from a purely moral perspective came through loud and clear: “ I am loathe to constantly talk about native plants out of context. I talk about a system. We really have to understand systems, dynamics, intervening vegetative dynamics... We have to teach people to see the wonder of ...