Hurricane Garden Prep & Recovery: A Florida Guide

The storm is coming. The garden has a plan.

Every Florida gardener eventually faces the same week: the forecast cone points at you, and suddenly the garden — the thing you’ve poured months into — is in the path of 120-mph wind. Panic-planting is not a strategy. This guide is: a phase-by-phase checklist for before, during, and after, plus the Florida natives that shrug off storms better than anything else you could plant.

Two principles run the whole thing. One: people over plants, every time. Nothing in this checklist is worth an injury. Two: the best hurricane prep happens on calm days. Choosing wind-tough plants, pruning deadwood in spring, and staking young trees properly beats any last-minute scramble.

How to use this guide

Three tabs above: before (the prep list, with timing notes), during (mostly: stay inside), and after (the recovery sequence — order matters). Check items off as you go. Below the checklist, the storm-tough natives to replant with.

The recovery rules that matter most

• Wait before declaring death. Give damaged plants 4–6 weeks. Half the “dead” garden after a storm is just sulking.
• Don’t fertilize stressed plants. Fertilizer is salt; salt on damaged roots is cruelty.
• Clean cuts, never topping. Prune broken limbs back to the branch collar. Topping creates weak regrowth that fails in the next storm.
• Wash off salt spray within a day or two if you’re coastal — it buys back a lot of foliage.
• Flooded edibles get discarded, and the bed waits 90–120 days before food goes back in. Floodwater is not irrigation.

Keep Growing 🌱

Where to go next:

• Florida Growing Seasons
• Living Soil for Florida Gardens
• Sandy-soil guide