00:00The city of Miami valued shade from non-native trees over the planting of
00:05native bald cypress trees. So like you need to replace this many square feet of
00:09shade trees and I put in a bunch of cypress and like oh cypress aren't
00:12shade trees. Like you're kidding me. I'm on the canal that would have been cypress.
00:15I would like to do a dramatic reading of your municipal warning if you don't.
00:20I'm happy to do it. Failure to comply with this notice within 30 days Florida
00:27law authorizes the district to recover a civil penalty of up to ten thousand
00:32dollars per day. And I had to convince them and I got a council member and now
00:36I can get credit for cypress being shade trees if you're close to water only.
00:40Because of your advocacy of what you did on your property. Yeah. So what we're
00:44saying is we have work to do here in changing the entire culture. You have
00:48policies in place that are working against beneficial things you're trying to do.
00:52That's right. So this will reduce erosion so it saves them money. Down there in
00:56that corner they had to put in a seawall for millions of dollars and if you
01:00just plant cypress you don't need a seawall. You don't get the erosion and it
01:03strengthens the banks. Right. This is why the Department of Unauthorized Forestry.
01:06That's what this so that's what we have to change is put that mentality up top.
01:10Yeah. So you got a bunch of native s**t. Get back. Let's go check it out.
01:13Right? Let's go check it out. A couple years ago I got motivated to finally restore the
01:21backyard. So we had a huge stand of invasive Bishofia trees. It's really harmful for the
01:25environment. So we ripped them all out and over the span of a couple of months
01:28built a berm here to have pine rockland plants elevated in a ridge. It manages
01:33floodwater away from the house and helps conduct it down into the aquifer instead
01:37of flushing it out to the bay. It's really filled in. There's a trail behind
01:41where my kids left the play in and we have butterflies all day long. What we're
01:44talking about now is ecozones. So you got pine rockland which is the kind of drier
01:50more arid micro sites with a different plant community versus what might be on the
01:54water. That's right. Charlie envisions his new front yard as a collection of
01:58micro sites. Each home to plants that evolved in these specific types of
02:02habitat. Whether in full sun out where there's now open lawn or down by the
02:06water in the shade of native palms and cypress. Anyone who's worried about
02:10flooding especially here in low-lying Florida and has king tides now which is
02:14a sea level rise. Plant some cypress trees they'll suck up all the water but to be a
02:18good citizen you want to keep the water on property you want to put it in your
02:21trees and you want to go down into the aquifer. They're essentially redwoods of
02:24the southeast.
02:30you
