Prototype Home Forest

Pinecrest Forest Project

When we moved into our home a few years ago there was a large stand of invasive Bischofia trees that had taken over the backyard. We also had a water intrusion problem where drainage ditch from the rear street ended at our house and the runoff from the whole block entered our property.

I grew up visiting the Everglades with my family and the Boy Scouts and I wanted to have that natural beauty at home. My goal wasn’t to do a strict native habitat restoration of the plants that would have originally been here, but rather to maximize the regional biodiversity used in the project and have the distinct habitat zones that you’ll find when you visit the park. We hired Howard Tonkin from Urban Habitat who specializes in this type of work, and he did the design and installation. Tree clearing happened in September 2020 and planting took place from November to February 2021.

Planning

Howard designed an expanded planting area with an elevated pine rockland berm to keep water away from the house. In front of the berm is a butterfly and wildflower garden for the kids. Behind the berm is a walking path that doubles as a dry creek bed with cypress and pond apple at each bend. It slows the water down during a storm and tries to mitigate it into the ground instead of flushing it into the canal. Behind the path along the street is a transition zone giving us privacy in layers. Along the right side of the drawing is a hardwood hammock zone and along the canal on the left there’s a cypress dome with a beachy/coastal zone below. We also reduced our rear St Augustine grass lawn area by over 2/3 and replaced it with native ground covers.

The Village of Pinecrest building department was friendly, however we found the permitting process overbearing considering how much our plan was aligned with the goals of the village. The permit criteria seemed to be focused only on preserving shade and didn’t care about native plants. It was trying to protect my poinciana and some coconut palms (both exotic) while not giving me any credit for the dozens of cypress we were putting in, which belong here by the water.