13 Native Plants for Sarasota Landscapes & How to Maintain Them

Native plants can get a bad rap, living in the shadow of showstoppers like stunning hibiscus bigger than your head. 

But don’t count natives out. They save you time and money, help the environment, give beneficial bees a boost and, guess what — plenty of them are pretty. 

And when hurricanes last fall wiped out entire Sarasota landscapes, sturdy native plants stood strong. Now, homeowners who want to play it safe are making natives more popular than ever. 

What are the best Sarasota native plants? The towering, majestic royal palm. Fantastic puffy plumes of pink muhly grass. Bright, cheerful beach sunflowers. The sturdy, fernlike coontie. Classic Southern magnolia. And the list goes on. 

Keep reading to learn more about low maintenance Florida native plants, including:

What Is a Native Plant?

Why Use Sarasota Native Plants? 

Low-maintenance Florida Native Plants You’ll Love 

How to Plant Natives 

Maintenance for Sarasota Native Plants

What Is a Native Plant?

Native plants are varieties that are indigenous to a specific area. They’ve always been here. 

Sarasota native plants are from here, so they’re automatically at home. 

Why Use Sarasota Native Plants? 

Many Sarasota native plants are beautiful, adding majestic beauty, pretty flowers, graceful texture and intriguing foliage to your landscaping.

But landscaping with native plants offers plenty of other benefits, too:

• They’re tough. Florida’s climate can be intense, with scorching summers, torrential rain, high humidity, hurricanes and periods of drought. Native species have hung tough in these challenging conditions for thousands of years. They’ve got this.
• Native plants help our pollinator pals. They’re struggling out there. Bees are dying from a variety of factors, including pesticides, drought, habitat destruction, air pollution, global warming and more.
• Wildlife will thank you. Or they would, if they could. Native plants offer a free buffet of berries, nuts and seeds for wild creatures. Some native blooms provide nectar for hummingbirds.
• Florida native plants provide important shelter for wildlife, too. They especially appreciate layers, so choose native plants in a variety of sizes, from low perennials to medium-sized shrubs to towering trees. Birds love the protective shelter this provides for breeding.
• Native plants really thrive in their natural environment, which means they need less water, fertilizer and pesticides. Sarasota native plants naturally resist diseases and pests. That’s better for the environment, saves money and means less bothersome maintenance for you.
• Landscaping with Florida native plants helps prevent the spread of harmful invasive species. When plants are introduced that aren't native to our area, they can become invasive, choking out beneficial plants that birds and animals need to survive.

Low-maintenance Florida Native Plants You’ll Love 

Here’s your South Florida plant guide for these sturdy, low-maintenance plants. It includes a few of our favorites:

1. Royal Palm

This big beauty is a classic South Florida palm tree, with a smooth gray trunk, bright green crown and long, luxurious, full fronds.

Soaring to heights 80 feet tall, it’s a sought-after landscape palm for elegant South Florida homes.

A mature Royal Palm has a 10 foot by 10 foot root ball. It’s massive. So don’t plan to install one of these towering trees too close to your driveway. It will actually push your driveway pavers up off the ground or crack and heave the concrete. Make sure you have room. 

2. Pink Muhly Grass 

That’s right — pink grass! This low-maintenance Florida native plant is a stunner. It adds a pretty pink hue to your landscape but its real gift is texture.

The cotton candy-like plumes of this amazing ornamental grass almost glow when the sun shines through them, so plant it in full sun. 

In the spring and summer, the slender, long shoots of grass are green. As the fall approaches, the plant produces soft, fuzzy pink plumes. 

3. Live Oak

Who wouldn’t want to lounge in the shade of this majestic Southern beauty?

Expect a crown spread of 80 feet and a mature height of 50 feet. Their deep roots help anchor them firmly in the ground, making them less likely to be uprooted during storms. But know they’re with you for the long haul. They can live for centuries. 

4. Gumbo Limbo

This one wins the prize for most fun name to say. The Gumbo Limbo is a semi-evergreen tree with a thick trunk and branches covered with smooth, peeling coppery-colored bark. 

It earned the nickname "tourist tree" because of the red and peeling bark, like the skin of a sunburned tourist.

Another fun fact: its wood is soft and easily carved and was used for making carousel horses before the invention of molded plastic.

5. Coontie

 This cool native Florida plant with the funny name looks like a small fern, about one to three feet tall. It has stiff, glossy, featherlike leaves attached to a thick, short, underground stem.

These primitive plants were common during the dinosaur age, so they don’t plan on going anywhere.

It’s drought tolerant and offers a fun bonus — it’s the favorite food of the larvae of the rare Atala butterfly. This rare butterfly, once thought to be extinct, is making a comeback thanks to the popularity of coontie in Florida landscaping. 

6. Sabal Palm

Why not adopt one of Florida’s state trees? 

These low-maintenance Florida native plants
have curved, fan-shaped palm leaves with blades that are 3 to 4 feet long. 

A full, round canopy forms atop a trunk that is 10 to 16 inches in diameter and grows to 40 feet tall. 

If you live in an HOA that requires native plants in the landscaping, this guy will come in handy. And when hurricanes tore through Sarasota neighborhoods, Sabal palms stood strong, when other palms definitely didn’t. 

7. Beach Sunflowers

These bright blooms are tougher than they look. They love our sandy soil and they’re fine with dry conditions.

These Florida native plants flower on and off year round, but unlike traditional towering sunflowers, they stay nice and tidy at about 18 inches.

8. Sea Grape

Grapes by the sea? Fun! This coastal plant offers clusters of red, grape-like fruits. They’re not grapes, exactly, but go ahead and try one. They do taste kind of grapey.

But this native isn’t just fruity. It literally holds the beach together, used for beach recovery after last year’s hurricanes. Sea grapes trap sand in their leaves, limbs, and stalks, which helps to stabilize beaches and dunes, slowing erosion. That impressive quality makes it popular, and sometimes hard to find. 

9. Fakahatchee Grass 

Cool name, great Florida native plant. Its tall, green, grass-like foliage rises upright to form clumps between 4 and 6 feet tall and wide, offering great texture to your landscape. The leaves have small, sharp teeth along their edges.

Bonus: it’s the larval food plant for the Byssus Skipper butterfly.

Note: the dwarf variety is smaller and more manageable for most yards. It only grows to two to three feet tall.

10. Passion Flower

Feel free to gasp. Anyone who insists native plants aren’t pretty hasn’t seen this stunning flowering vine, with huge three- to five-inch flowers in shades of lavender or purple, with a wavy fringe. You’ll love it gracing your trellis or pergola. Nobody would guess it’s a low-maintenance Florida native plant. 

11. Saw Palmetto 

We love the silver version of this popular plant, one of our favorite native Florida plants for landscaping. It provides great textural interest to the landscape. The clumping, multi-trunked palm has stout stems that usually crawl across the ground and produce fan-shaped fronds.

The "saw" in the plant's name refers to the saw-like teeth on the leaf stems.

12. Buttonwood 

There’s a green buttonwood and silver buttonwood, both coastal evergreens with small brown berries that look like wood buttons. They tolerate salt water, salty soil and wind, making them great low-maintenance Florida native plants. 

13. Southern Magnolia

These beauties will wow you with their stunning, fragrant flowers and pretty evergreen foliage. But they’re tough, too. 
Like live oaks, Southern magnolias have a deep, strong root system, making them less likely to be uprooted during strong winds.

How to Plant Natives

 Use the same steps to plant native plants as you would any other plant: 

• Prepare the site by clearing away any weeds.
• Amend the soil with compost to improve drainage and fertility.
• Gently loosen the roots of the plant before removing it from its container.
• Place the plant in the hole, ensuring the root ball is at the same depth it was in the container.
• Backfill the hole with soil, making sure to eliminate air pockets and firm the soil around the roots.
• Water the newly planted area thoroughly.
• Water deeply and less frequently to encourage deep root growth.
• Add a layer of mulch around the plants, keeping it away from the stems. Mulch helps retain moisture, keeps weeds away and adds nutrients to the soil. 

Maintenance for Sarasota Native Plants

Here’s the great news— Florida native plants hardly need any maintenance at all. It’s one of their best features. 

No need to fertilize native plants — they’re adapted to local soil conditions. 

Pest control? Don’t worry about it. They stand strong against pests. 

Water? They’re mostly happy with rainfall. 

Use your yard work time to read a book, take a pottery class or bake a key lime pie. 

Need Native Florida Plants for Landscaping? Talk To Us 

Let’s see — you can have beach sunflowers, help the bees, save money on irrigation, cut down on yard maintenance and keep chemicals out of the environment. Also, pink grass! 

You’re sold on native plants, right? 

We can’t wait to help you get started. 

Give us a call or fill out our form today! Our team of Sarasota landscape experts can’t wait to help you add these smart, sturdy native plants to your Sarasota landscape. You can already hear the bees buzzing thanks. 

Image Source: Beach sunflower, Southern Magnolia