On the Job
Staff
Five years ago,Martin Prochazka indulged his lifelong interest in plants when he decided to make them his career. Now the manager of All Native Garden Center, Nursery & Landscapes in Fort Myers, he handles every aspect of the business, from scoping out new landscape sites to creating designs for customers, and doing any and all follow-up maintenance. Because All Native is the only landscaping service in Lee, Collier and Charlotte counties to sell strictly native plants, Prochazka is the man to call if it’s indigenous greenery you’re after.

What kind of customers does All Native work with?
Mostly residences, but we’ve done some work for the City of Cape Coral and the City of Fort Myers and [Town of] Fort Myers Beach.

What’s different about the kind of landscaping that you do?
The plants that you get at Home Depot or Lowe’s are normally exotic, and they’re the [ones] that you have to really take care of. They get funguses, they get scales; the list goes on and on. We promote native plants that are indigenous to this region and are resistant to problems that exotic plants may have.


Do native plants have appeal other than being lower maintenance?
Most of our customers are interested in native plants because of how they affect the animals and the wildlife. Native plants support [migrating] birds as they travel from north to south, and by replacing them with non-native species, like many communities are doing, when these birds come down here, there’s nothing for them to eat. I have people I’ve done landscape installation for who [end up] in tears; they live on a golf course, and all they’ve seen for 10 to 15 years is just green grass and palm trees. After we install the native landscapes, they start to get birds nesting in their trees, butterflies, bees; all kinds of stuff is happening in their garden all of a sudden.

Does using indigenous plants affect the way the landscaping looks?
Definitely. Native plants won’t give you nice large flowers like hibiscus, for instance, or gardenia. They’ll give you small flowers. But using native plants is getting more and more popular, especially during water restrictions. People want carefree landscaping so they don’t have to worry about plants dying because there is not enough water or fertilizers.

What do you love most about your job?
Seeing that people are satisfied with what we’ve done and seeing them really understanding what we’ve done. That’s the most beautiful part. They’ve bought this and they’ve bought that [elsewhere], and then they buy plants from us and say, “All right, it really works. I plug it in, barely water it, and it still grows.”