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Reward in sharing native place

Evan Earle Jr.'s yard is a Certified Wildlife Habitat for all sorts of critters, including snakes and birds, that thrive among the native plants and food sources.

By THERESA BLACKWELL
Published July 17, 2006

OLDSMAR - Snug in his three-story treehouse of a home during a thunderstorm Thursday, Evan Earle Jr. talked about the benefits of a yard with native Florida vegetation and very little grass.

For one thing, he can mow the patch of grass his friends call "the bowling alley" in just a few minutes with a push mower.

He uses no fertilizer, no pesticides.

The fun begins, he said, when he starts weeding. Before long, he decides to move a plant here, another plant there.

"Five hours later, I'm covered in mud," he said, "and it's time to call it a day."

Earle, 47, is not the only one who enjoys his landscape. He shares it at times with raccoons, opossums, cardinals, a red-shouldered hawk, ospreys, blue jays, mockingbirds, hummingbirds, squirrels, reptiles, amphibians, butterflies and more.

About two weeks ago, the National Wildlife Federation recognized Earle's yard as a Certified Wildlife Habitat. Earle, a program scheduler with defense contractor ATK of Clearwater, joins the ranks of about 180 other Pinellas County homeowners with certified yards.

The mission of the National Wildlife Federation is to inspire Americans to protect wildlife for the future.

"One of the big projects we have going on in Florida is to save enough habitat for the Florida panther," said Mary Burnette, senior communications manager with the group. "If the development continues, they will just die out."

The habitat certification program is one way the nonprofit encourages individuals, businesses, schools and other groups to provide habitat for wildlife in the midst of development. Coconut Creek in Broward County is certified, as is Broward County.

Though Pinellas County residents won't likely save the panthers with their landscape, other wildlife will appreciate a place to find food, water, shelter and a place to raise their offspring.

Earle's home provides those elements, the basis for certification in the program.

He lives there with Pumpkin, his orange cat, and traces his love of plants and gardening to his mother, Ruth Earle of Dunedin, and two late great-aunts, Helen Borz and Helen Richie. The aunts left Earle the orchids that bloom in his yard.

From his father, Evan Earle of Dunedin, Earle and his two younger brothers learned to appreciate the environment. And Earle's late grandmother, Alice Earle of Dunedin, would help any injured critter the boys brought to her.

When he bought the house on Huron Avenue in unincorporated Pinellas County, near Shore Drive, in 2000, Earle cleared the invasive air potato and took out some grass. He added native Florida plants and trees and some non-native flowers, lacing them among existing saw palmetto. He cleaned out a small pond with a pump and added birdbaths, an owl house, a bat house, walkways and benches. When a pine snapped in a storm, he left the trunk standing for the woodpeckers.

Wildlife seems to know that it is welcome.

A pileated woodpecker once landed on the screen of Earle's den and hung there for a while. Another day, a red-shouldered hawk landed in a nearby pine to eat a neighborhood chicken. Friends spending the night in Earle's guest room awoke one morning to a raccoon and her two young peering in the window. And Earle finds his favorite snake, the very small ring-necked snake, in the mulch.

As the rain slacked a bit Thursday, Earle led a tour of his habitat, pointing out such food sources as beauty berry, gallberry, sea grapes, wild coffee, privet and yaupon holly.

Earle hopes having his yard certified will encourage others to help wildlife.

"They don't have to go this far," he said, beside his pond. "But if they want to do a little bit, every little bit helps."

[Last modified July 16, 2006, 21:39:22]