Florida Nurseries Battered by Hurricane Frances

LOXAHATCHEE, Fla. – The queen palms at Green Paradise Landscape Nursery couldn't take the abuse they received during Hurricane Frances.

"They were beaten so hard for so many hours, most are ruined," says Ramon Vilarino, who owns the nursery on 40 acres at 1300 D Road in Loxahatchee.

"The heart is snapped," he says while peering up at the part of a queen palm where the fronds sprout.

Green Paradise is one of about 680 nurseries in Palm Beach County, and one of more than 60 in the Loxahatchee area on both sides of Okeechobee Boulevard west of U.S. 441. No industry-wide damage estimates are available yet, said Florida Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson.

On Tuesday, owners and workers were trying to clean up the mess left by the hurricane, which ripped screen houses and ground cloths and left thousands, possibly millions, of plants in standing water.

Vilarino, whose family owns three other nursery fields totaling 160 acres in Loxahatchee, estimates the storm snapped, destroyed or damaged beyond repair 80 percent to 85 of the business' 70,000 trees. The inventory of close to 40 varieties of trees is worth about $3 million, he says.

The soggy, saturated ground had a quicksand-like hold on many of the trees mired in it. Others were broken, bent or ripped apart.

"At this particular farm, the hurricane has put us out of business. Honestly, I don't know what we're going to do," Vilarino says. "That's one of the bad things about farming. Mother Nature can have a sick sense of humor."

At Vila & Son Landscaping Corp. in Loxahatchee, manager Keith O'Neill says plants in containers fared better than in-ground trees because workers laid them down before the storm. The Homestead-based firm has 13 acres in Loxahatchee.

"Our Washingtonia and queen palms got beat pretty well,” O’Neill says. “We've been cleaning up since Monday.”

Elsewhere in Loxahatchee, Elise Ryan, owner of 10-acre Color Garden Farms on A Road, and her employees had spent three days righting container plants that had been laid down to protect them before the storm. The nursery sells a variety of landscape plants.

"It's a mess," Ryan says. "The big stuff is pretty well trashed. A lot of plants look OK, but they're leaning sideways. Some plants are just twisted up."

Employees were working Tuesday to erect a potting shed that had collapsed. A lack of electricity makes many tasks more difficult, including watering plants.

Ryan said she has not had time to assess the damage, but it appears substantial.

"We're just triaging right now," she says.