Lakewood Ranch Protect Our Ponds group brainstorms ways to educate residents on landscaping

For more than a year, Lakewood Ranch residents have brainstormed ways to educate their neighbors on environmentally-sound landscape practices.

Although its been a struggle for the group, named the Protect Our Ponds task force, to accrue more members and pinpoint a way to spread their message on a large scale, the East County members are another step closer to their mission.

At a meeting Sept. 29, the committee agreed to send correspondence to local homeowners association groups to help further spread the message of proper landscape maintenance.

Landscape vendors, such as DeLoy Dahlman, of Dahlman's Landscape Management, hopes the HOAs can stress the importance of not mowing grass too short and too close to ponds, and other issues that don't comply with Florida Friendly Landscaping.

"It's a matter of reaching communities," Dahlman said. "Our living environment is much more than the structures we live in."

The group agreed residents, HOAs and CDD boards don't know the right questions to ask, and might just hire the lowest bidding contractor.

The Manatee County Extension Office has started offering classes to teach county residents how to hire landscapers.

"Lakewood Ranch is good with hiring responsible contractors," Environmental Horticulture & Water Conservation Specialist Michelle Atkinson said. "We need good landscapers out here, too, who know what they're doing."

The task force hopes to have another meeting with residents and landscapers that emulates the conversation had this week at Lakewood Ranch Town Hall.

"We need to work with those groups to get over this big disconnect," resident Carol Lowry-Nation said. "Everyone wants their yards nice and green, but we need more knowledge on what that means."

Contact Amanda Sebastiano at [email protected].