A Ficus Falls in Florida: Green Inspiration Grows from Hurricane Debris

COMMENTARY: A Ficus Falls in Florida
Green Inspiration Grows from Hurricane Debris
By Gary S. Hines

http://www.emagazine.com/view/?4620&printview&imagesoff
http://www.emagazine.com/view/?4620

It was late October, 2005. Hurricane Wilma had just raced across South Florida...

Wilma had been weakening when it reached Broward. It first attacked Florida’s Gulf Coast as a Category 3 storm, then marched across the Everglades. It reached the Atlantic Coast as a Category 2. Parks wondered: How could Wilma snatch such a big tree completely out of the ground and fling it across a boulevard?

Michael Garretson, the school system’s facilities chief, had an answer. Trees native to Florida have evolved through many millennia of hurricanes; they have sufficient roots to hold their ground, he told Parks. But the ficus is a non-native invader.

For Parks, this was a pivotal revelation. For Broward County Public Schools, it was the first step in a program of environmental awareness that has made the school system—the nation’s sixth largest—one of the greenest, too.

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