Native Plants and Wildlife Gardens
Healthy Gardens. Healthy Planet
Kevin and his wife Judy run MetroVerde, a plant-based biodiversity business. Their focus is restoring wildlife habitat to the urban core, 'volumetric green' as he refers to the vertical landscaping. Kevin's undergrad is in biology with a focus in botany and he holds the Juris Doctor in law (environmental and land use). He worked for the USFWS while in law school on Endangered Species Act lawsuit data.
MetroVerde's green roofs and living walls are designed for cyclone and hurricane impacted areas and designs center around native plants. MetroVerde was awarded the North Florida USGBC's award for Innovation in Water Conservation and Landscape Design for the Villa Paraiso project.
Kevin writes a daily green roof blog, Living Green Roofs and Seeds For Green Roofs. He is a LEED BG+C and an ISA Certified Arborist & Municipal Specialist Arborist. Follow @kevinsonger on twitter
My latest CT scan at Flagler Hospital in St. Augustine gave me an opportunity to consider the importance of native plants and wildlife within the built environment and urban core. Attractive Urban Core landscapes always catch my eye, but as I walked into the hospital for my cardiac tests I thought about how grand it [...]
When we design a Green Roof with native plants one of our project objectives almost always includes ‘year round color interest”. Hopeless naive I am when it comes to believing the solution to ADHD lies somewhere not so hidden in the color, texture and hues of Green Roof wildflowers. Of course there are many governmental [...]
Over the past thirty five years of spending significant time outdoors I’ve come to appreciate the language of plants, especially those native to an ecosystem. But like getting to know people from different cultures, the language barrier at first was problematic. At the time of my first field assignment I had no idea plants [...]
Unfortunately many native plant populations are under daily survival pressure from development activities, a healthy horticultural industry of exotic and landscape plants and the herbicide business. Even with focused preservation efforts of groups like Native Plant Societies, The Nature Conservancy and other organizations, species of endemic plants are rapidly diminishing in numbers and geographic [...]
In a brief instant one year ago this week my life changed dramatically for the better. After toiling atop a living roof garden for the most part of an afternoon, I climbed down, took a shower and ate a quiet dinner. My family was spending the night in our new Palm Coast house sixty miles south of [...]
Green Roof plant photosynthesis has been a topic of conversation of mine many times. Florida Permaculture Garden – Lots of Food in Small Spaces Readers of my Green Roof and Urban Greening blog know there are three types of photosynthesis in plants. What we may not know is the lesson in human longevity we can also take [...]
Florida Green Roof, Extensive, Rooftop Permaculture Ever thought about helping save the planet’s wildlife from extinction? Installing a windowsill box, green roof or living wall can help. Many species are dependent on the amount of greenery growing up above the ground for survival. Species like the green Florida anole, Anolis carolinensis are being pushed towards [...]
No way, pardon the grammar, is this note a scientific paper about native and non-native plants. In fact the post here shows my confusion and ignorance on the topic. I have many questions and few, if any, answers. There are many schools of thought and argument concerning the definition of what is a native plant [...]
There are many, many reasons to construct a green roof, including; Cleaning Stormwater Reducing Heat Island Effect Creating Sense of Place Providing Habitat for Urban Core Wildlife Preserving Biodiversity Sequestering Carbon Producing Oxygen, and more. There are many other, less expensive roofing technologies capable of; Cleaning Stormwater, and Reducing Heat Island Effect However, besides Green [...]
Ditches, stormwater ponds, roadside rights-of-way and other community infrastructure serve as important habitat for wildlife in today’s Urban Core. Undeniably, wildlife use the native, adapted and even invasive plants growing in these areas for forage, communal and breeding habitat. One of my favorits examples is the large stormwater pond next to my cardiologist’s office in [...]
