Go Native Blog

Florida privet or Forestiera segregata is a wildlife attracting superstar.

So Florida privet can grow about 10 to 15 feet tall and eight to 10 feet wide, will grow in full sun to part shade and is salt and drought tolerant. It flowers all year round with a peak in late winter or early spring and is a great attractor for pollinators. These flowers are followed by a dark blue Berry that provide for a whole bunch of different wildlife, especially birds. So if you’re out in the wild, there’s a few different ways that you can identify the Florida privet.

One of them is the  leaf shape. It’s got a nice shiny green, it’s a oblong and a on the underside. It’s got this kind of paleish green color and they are arranged in an opposite pattern, meaning that a leaf will come off on the same points, the same growth node as all of the others. So you can see that they come out to here. Right now they’re actually almost through flowering and the berry production is actually starting. So you can see these little tiny clusters here are all going to turn into bigger Blackish berries. And then the other thing that Florida privet is known for is that it has a very irregular growth habit.

 So you can see all of the branches kind of crisscrossing and jutting out and growing different ways. This kind of adds to that dense growth habit that so many different types of wildlife expect from the privet. So this plan is really easy to incorporate into a landscape. It responds well to hedging and pruning can be trained into a small tree and if left a growth has maintenance can lend itself to a more natural landscape. So thanks for watching another one of our videos, guys. If you enjoyed it, be sure to hit the like button. We love getting your feedback. So leave us a comment down below and we’ll see you guys next time.