Iguanas, Cold and South Florida Gardeners

3. April 2010 by Carol Whitaker.

In my garden iguanas have been a part of the ecosystem. I’ve had to get used to the fact that I would see few of certain flowers and watch the demise of many of my beloved herbs and tender perennials. The local iguanas have found my ground covers irresistible, chowing down on such favorites as the native Mimosa, Ruellia, and even muhly grass. Eating the flowers of bouganvilla and the lone Hibiscus.Gardeners have asked me time and again for remedies to rid their gardens of these exotics creatures. They are escapees into our local habitat and are thought to have gotten out of hand due to owners of these creatures setting them free.I have been unable to offer remedies beyond planting more woody shrubs and trees that they don’t enjoy as much, and planting more mature plants.Certainly we can spray our plants with flavors they wouldn’t be likely to enjoy like cayenne pepper. And while I often use and advocate the use of environmentally friendly alternatives to pesticides, fungicides and herbicides, some of the activities offered by other advocates are just too silly and time consuming to even be considered, like spraying the plants forever and a day, just to keep the iguanas at bay.I just haven’t felt the need to kill the pesky critters. I just can’t take their lives. I am blessed with such such an abundance and there are plenty of plants to which they do no harm. Like the glorious oaks, whose branches they use to lay on above my head as they take pleasure in warming themselves from the sun.In my own garden they have eaten the younger plants first so that older Alocasias are untouched by them, but smaller, more tender elephant ears have disappeared quickly.After this last cold their numbers have dwindled to the point where I have not seen one in my garden.Experts believe many didn’t survive when our temperatures dipped so low that they could not recover and many died. In my garden the mint and the Belemcanda are growing back. The Hibiscus and bouganvilla are blooming.Wednesday I was in a friend’s garden, admiring her new additions, and there climbing through a patch of king’s mantle was one of the bright green creatures we thought we were rid of, eyes fixed on us. Not until she shook the branches of the plants did it make an attempt to scuttle off, up a nearby cabbage palm. She noted how the flowers on the king’s mantle were dwindling. Whether or not a mate for this creature lives nearby is an unknown. So, the problem may or may not be over.If they show up again in my garden, I will let them live there with the native creatures, but I will miss my flowers and tender perennials.

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