apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

That's horsetail, which is awfully invasive and hard to get rid of, once it's in your garden....

Yep. Horesetail's a gnarly weed.

There's a book about gardening with nature that will change the way you look at every plant and creature in your garden. Noah's Garden by Sara Stein is the ultimate guide to green gardening. Should be required reading for anyone who owns even the tiniest plot of earth.

A weed is a plant whose virtues have yet to be discovered.

Yes, those are horsetails. They look really pretty in those photos. Usually I see them overwhelming the landscaping in public parks in Seattle. They like damp conditions, and I hear they are very difficult to get rid of once established.

The problem is, if you have horsetails in your garden, you will soon have nothing else.

They are older than dirt, and practically unkillable.

Horsetail ... a prehistoric fern that you will never get rid of and it is extremely invasive. Unfortunately, we have some in one area of our property. For five years now we have had a company come and spray with chemicals that are no longer considered safe and have now been taken off the market. Last year we excavated the area, put down industrial strength landscape fabric, covered the area with at least six inches of river rock and it's back again this year!!! We have just sprayed again and will probably have to do so every year. This nasty weed even comes up through our driveway pavement. Also, this area does not get watered and we live in a dry climate.

We live in hot, humid, sunny Tampa, so it's hard to find something that will live in a drought (8 months/year) and in floods (4 summer months).

So we get our inspiration from a few places: the USF Botanical Gardens, the Lowry Park Zoo, and neighbors.

Equisetum vulgare
Yes Horsetail. It should die pretty fast without water. It likes boggy conditions. So if you are trying to conserve water this would not be the plant for you. Look for drought tolerant plants and california natives. There are some exciting ones. Check out the Sunset Western Garden Book for ideas. Also the Botanical Gardens in SF has a native garden to look at and offers native plants for sale at their nursery about once a month and pretty cheap too. 3 different kinds of Lupines are great for attracting the very endangered Mission Blue Butterfly and they get beautiful flowers, Lupinus albifrons, L. formosus, and L. variicolor. Just keep in mind that the butterfly larvae eat the leaves so don't spray them.