One of the best things about writing these articles is the feedback I have received from readers and fellow gardeners.

I was fortunate to have a recent tour of the wonderful Phipps Ocean Park. This exciting project will be a tremendous gift to the residents of Palm Beach.

The Preservation Foundation’s plans for the renovation of this 18-acre area include educational facilities and native landscaping to promote and restore environmental sustainability. In 1948, the Phipps family donated 1,200 feet of ocean frontage for use as a public park to ensure the land remained open in perpetuity. The park has not been well-managed in the intervening 75 years, is grossly underutilized, and currently consists of just some random paths and picnic tables with a few cabanas. Plantings are infested with invasive species including Brazilian pepper and melaleuca, and it is not an inviting area to visit.

"Project Paradise," an eye-opening documentary shown at the Society of the Four Arts last week, examined Florida’s most valuable natural resource: water.

We’ve discussed the importance of native plants for the sustenance they provide our birds and butterflies, and for the habitat they afford local wildlife.

But planting natives is also just smart landscaping: Natives need much less water than more commonly used exotic annuals such as impatiens, begonias and coleus, and natives help regenerate and restore the soil. Their deeper, more expansive root systems retain micronutrients and their dense coverage protects from wind, sun and heavy rain.

One of the takeaways from last week’s all-town zoning code review was that the natural environment is our superpower.

Our designs must embrace open spaces, including porticos, terraces and loggias, providing shade, light, and air: design over density. We are a town, not a resort or a gated community; we need to be unified without uniformity.

I’ve discussed the importance of native plants for the survival of our pollinators and birds, but I haven’t really explained why invasives are so damaging to our environment.

We lost David Crosby recently, and in a fitting radio tribute, I heard his iconic tenor in ‘'Woodstock'’ while I was driving.

Listening to Joni Mitchell’s lyrics, the wonderful refrain — “We are stardust, we are golden / We are billion-year-old carbon / And we’ve got to get ourselves / Back to the garden” — struck me as perhaps more pertinent today than it was in the 1960s. We had it right back then. We do need to get ourselves back to the garden, and there’s no better opportunity than here in South Florida.

With so much construction going on throughout South Florida and Palm Beach, new hedges are inevitably being planted everywhere. Ficus (Ficus benjamina) has been banned due to the whitefly infestation and landscapers are now recommending clusia as a replacement. This is absolutely the wrong choice.

When I count my blessings at the close of the year, family and health always top the list, along with coffee, but I am also grateful to have a garden.

The new pollinator/butterfly garden at the Ann Norton Sculpture Gardens opened last Sunday to great fanfare, and the butterflies, as if on cue, were all in attendance.

A few years ago, several homeowners on the North End put together a Healthy Yard Pledge, promising to reduce or eliminate the use of pesticides, herbicides and fungicides on their properties while urging their neighbors to do the same. It was an idea whose time was ripe, and many of us were encouraged by the popularity with which the pledge was received.

Adding native plants to our gardens has never been of more vital importance.

Butterflies, birds and wildlife are disappearing because the native plants on which they depend are rarely planted. Native plants have evolved over eons alongside their native wildlife counterparts, and as such are critical to the survival of our natural ecosytsems.

Palm Beach dodged a bullet with Hurricane Ian last week, but still saw some damage.

After perusing several gardens around the island, numerous plants stood out for surviving Ian’s winds and torrential rains here with flying colors. Here are some exceptionally hardy species that will help hurricane-proof your gardens, assuming we don’t get a 10-foot storm surge.

While I’ll always miss the daffodils, tulips and peonies that are harbingers of spring in the Northeast, I am constantly delighted by the explosion of color in my native Florida garden.

I would like to respond to the letter submitted by the landscapers in last Sunday’s paper ['Town's new native-plant rules are too onerous, need revision,' May 8 Palm Beach Daily News]. First of all, if we look at the big picture, I think we all want the same things: clean air, clean water and clean soil in which to grow healthy food.

The town of Palm Beach along with the Preservation Foundation, Palm Beach Day Academy and Palm Beach Public school students, the Palm Beach Civic Association, the Mounts Botanical Garden, and the Garden Club did an amazing job recently celebrating Earth Day.

In E.O. Wilson’s book “Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life,” this Pulitzer Prize-winning scientist — who died in December — reminds us that we are running critically low on clean water, fresh air, ocean bounty, rain forests, and the species of flora and fauna essential to maintaining life on earth.

Spring blossoms and their accompanying pollinators are out and about, and to my mind, there is nothing more delightful than a vibrant garden alive with birdsong and butterflies.

When choosing a hedge — perhaps to replace your ficus — it’s important to first consider its location.

I question the complaint in last Sunday’s paper that native plants don’t offer enough variety for new landscapes, are hard to locate or don’t allow people the freedom to express themselves through their gardens.