Potent Porter weeds

TRY THEIR TWISTING TENDRILS OF JEWEL-TONED BLOOMS IN THE BUTTERFLY GARDEN AND BEYOND

- VICTOR LAZZARI

My love of porterweeds (Stachytarpheta) really began not in South Florida, where I currently live—and where these flowers are as commonplace as pigeons in Central Park—but way back when I was a landscape design undergrad at the University of Maryland.

I spent my first 26 years gardening in the temperate Mid-Atlantic climate of USDA Zone 7, and let me say: The Maryland gardener is a spoiled one. They can grow anything from the North that can handle a little heat (think peonies and tulips), plus anything from the South that can tolerate some frost (camellias, azaleas and so forth).

Fueled by this broad palette, as a practicing designer I made English-style flower gardens inspired by Gertrude Jekyll. In 2007, when I got a job offer in Miami that I couldn’t refuse, I thought it meant the end of my feminine floral designs. I could only envision my new landscapes looking like Jurassic Park, with oversized foliage and not much else.

But one of my class assignments at UMD had been to design a tropical-looking garden that would be fully winter hardy in Zone 7, which I executed with heavy use of hardy hibiscus and yuccas. About a year after moving to Miami, I recalled this old project and experienced a lightbulb moment: If I could design a tropical-looking garden in a cold climate, why not an English garden in a tropical climate? Thus, I began scouring every nursery in South Florida for anything that looked “Northern” to me—that is, fine-textured, herbaceous and with a heavy sprinkling of small(ish) flowers.