Extension Education Urban Horticulture

Broward County encourages residents to greatly enhance water conservation and decrease runoff.  Many of the County’s residents are unfamiliar with the unique growing and environmental conditions of South Florida.  Faced with Florida's diverse and often unfamiliar environmental conditions, well-meaning individuals often waste water, fertilizers, pesticides and energy through inappropriate landscape designs and improper landscape practices. The Florida Yards and Neighborhoods Program is designed to assist homeowners to landscape the Florida Friendly^® way, using low maintenance plants and environmentally sustainable practices. The Master Gardener Volunteer Program provides a way to significantly augment the resources of the county Urban Horticulture Extension Agent. Urban and Commercial Horticulture synergize to respond to pest alerts, water restrictions and other environmental crises affecting our water, plant and soil resources.

Urban Horticultural Extension has

v     Created 31 Mobile Extension Offices run by Local Master Gardener Coordinators, located in 26 of Broward’s 31 cities. Total residents assisted annually exceeds 31,000.

v     Served more than 10,000 residents annually through the Public Answer Hotline 954-370-3725 and mastergardener@broward.org.

v     Achieved greater public implementation of Florida Yards and Neighborhoods’ sustainable landscaping and integrated horticultural and structural pest best management practices, through more than 300 Extension-prepared programs delivered to the public by staff and our Master Gardeners, impacting over  21,000 residents each year. We also assist residents with tools provided to them by FYN’s special self-tutorial web pages, at http://www.floridayards.org/

v     Obtained significant practice changes for over 98% of participants, and three Homeowner Associations used over 15% less water than the previous year.

v     Has trained municipal public works and parks personnel from 23 cities in Florida Friendly^® best management practices.

v     Received over 6,000 volunteer hours from over 130 Master Gardeners = 3 Full-Time Equivalents (staff members).

v  Provides Master Gardener Volunteers to assist Parks and Recreation with special Florida Friendly^® Landscapes, instructors to 4-H Junior Master Gardener clubs, and to provide advisors to County and municipal tree giveaways, homeowner and condo associations, and to deliver specialized lectures in Broward County Public Schools

v     Served as the identification authority for pests, poisonous plant identification and landscape disease diagnosis  

v     Changed our teaching schedule to train 50 new Master Gardeners a year through two intensive, 13-week lecture, lab and field courses comprising over 100 hours, as a direct response to needs of Broward NatureScape to provide more FYN and NatureScape Master Gardener Yard Inspectors.

v     Produced numerous Planting Guides for use in plant giveaways to empower landscapers and homeowners to select, install and maintain the most drought-, hurricane-, and cost-efficient plants

UF-IFAS/Broward County Urban Horticulture formulates implementation policy for the UF IFAS Florida Yards and Neighborhoods residential and commercial developments in Broward County.  As new research is produced at the UF IFAS Research and Education Centers across the state, Extension Agents work to produce Best Management Practices for sustainable, Florida Friendly^® landscape, horticultural and structural integrated pest management and publish and distribute UF IFAS EDIS (Electronic Data Information Source: http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/) publications, locally-produced Fact Sheets, PowerPoint presentations and other literature backed by research results.

Some of our most popular literature and information is provided below:

• Note: “Florida Friendly^® is a service marked name of the University of Florida, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.