Designing with biodiversity in mind means thinking carefully about habitat structure, such as nesting habitat and food resources for songbirds, floral resources for pollinators, and the balancing of different plant families to provide broad-based support for diverse insects and animal life. It also means designing and constructing spaces that will not require heavy use of herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, and other harmful chemicals.
Monoculture turf with its heavy reliance on chemical inputs is often upheld as the classic example of a landscape hostile to biodiversity. Weedy public roadsides and medians can support a hundred times the amount of thriving insect life, including bees, butterflies, and other pollinators, than the carefully managed, high-input manicured medians characteristic of homeowners associations and other private developments. Embracing more diverse turf would require a major change of social within the HOA-dominated landscapes of Florida, but there is great potential for creating more biodiverse turf-scapes.
The imperative for embracing biodiversity as an organizing principle is especially relevant in Florida which represents one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots. The region hosts a tremendous number of endemic species, but it has lost much of its original habitat and is losing more to development. Yes, we need to protect, restore, and properly manage our remaining tracts of natural lands where we can; however, we can support a richer and varied life within developed areas and helping more species thrive there if we let biodiversity be a greater guide for outdoor development.