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Daphne Volcy has been chosen for an extreme yard makeover using all green and sustainable products. Watch »

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The grinding buzz of a chainsaw was the event’s trumpet chorus.

Replacing the cannons: The heavy thuds of logs hitting soft earth during the felling of a 60-foot Norfolk pine.

The unusual heraldry Wednesday morning was for a groundbreaking, literally, of a new-millennium landscape for Southwest Florida.

The tree toppling christened a first-of-its-kind project, a front yard of both beauty and sustainability created by a public-commercial partnership of the South Florida Water Management District and some 25 area companies. A 7-foot sign in front of the yard, declaring Daphne Volcy’s lawn, at 7050 Trail Blvd., an "X-treme Yard Makeover," identifies the six-week project, which will be supervised by the district and executed by volunteers from two universities and landscaping and allied trades.

The reinvented landscape is meant to thrive in Florida’s parched-to-soaked, windy, sultry, sunny climate and sandy soil. Volcy won’t have to worry that it will wilt if it isn’t drenched by sprinklers at least twice a week. She won’t have to regularly minister it all with fertilizer in bags too heavy for her to lift. Best of all, Florida’s lawn-killer chinch bugs will glare as they flitter by: Her yard won’t offer anything to destroy.

As part of a public Cinderella treatment, Volcy will get native plants that deliver fragrance right to her front door. She’ll have trees that offer cooling shade and a wind break for her brick-and-panel facade home. She’ll get plants that bloom throughout the year without surgical attention.

First and foremost, there will be no stickies. "That was the top priority — no thorns or anything that will hurt my grandkids," Volcy declared.

The water management district is hoping to make the yard a model for Collier County and beyond. It has partnered with the Collier County Extension Service, the University of South Florida and the 25 companies who are donating materials that show off their drought-tolerant, native-horticulture, easy-care wares. At this point, they’re not sure of the total cost.

"It’s amazing the number of people who have stepped up," declared Judy Haner, community outreach/media specialist for the district. "This project is really going to be beyond what we’d dreamed of."

The district’s goal, Haner said, was to create a yard that proves landscaping can have both curb appeal and environmental responsibility — Marilyn Monroe landscape with Gandhi upkeep. The district will videotape as rogue trees are taken down this week; weeds and invasives pulled out and carried away next week; a landscaping plan drawn; a new irrigation system mapped and installed; soil fattened up to hold more water; and new plants and moisture-protecting mulch installed.

"It’s not just about the drought. This is our long-term conservation effort to work with the environment we’ve been given," said Haner. The yard make-over will wean Volcy’s lawn, and by example, others, they hope, away from materials that use high amounts of phosphate and nitrogen, both of which have been associated with the deterioration of the Gulf of Mexico. The new landscaping will also use less of another diminishing Florida resource: fresh water.

The project is scheduled for completion and an open house June 28. Water district videographers and photographers will chronicle the work so both the water management district and the University of South Florida can offer its lessons through video streaming and/or DVDs. The university is hoping to create a Spanish-language program as well.

Volcy’s yard, on Trail Boulevard just north of Ridge Drive, nearly borders U.S. 41. It’s so close that the tabby roadbed of the original Tamiami Trail runs through her back yard. Drive past and you’ll be able to see what’s coming out, what’s going in and, six months from now, how the landscape has grown into the changes.

  

Volunteering to publicly admit your yard is a failure is difficult. When she toured the gardens of the extension service several weeks ago to see native landscaping, Volcy’s relaxed South Carolina accent couldn’t mask her frustration.

"I live in a good neighborhood. These are nice houses. I know my lawn is an eyesore to the area and I really want it to be right."

Since her husband’s death some years ago, the South Carolina native said she hadn’t been able to keep up with the demands of a nearly 150-by-50-foot front lawn that had been more of a hobby for him. The potted plants were the first to go, but even before once-a-week watering restrictions were levied on Southwest Florida in January, the lawn was headed for permanent brown. The irrigation system malfunctioned. And between a fulltime job as a scheduling nurse and weekends as an involved grandmother, Volcy doesn’t have the time — or the gardener’s drive — for the maintenance the yard needed.

An evaluation two weeks ago by a team from Water Management District and Extension Service found major invasives and exotics that desperately needed to be rooted out.

• Strangler figs. At least one of the parasitic plants had turned into a sapling looking for its eventual victim, a nearby tree. It will wrap itself around the tree to brace growth that can go as high as 40 feet; the host tree often dies in its embrace. Strangler figs, like many ot the other members of the ficus family, have tenacious roots that stretch underground in several directions and can wander across entire yards.

• Oyster plants, the spear-leaved plants with a purple undersides. Unfortunately, some people actually plant these, lamented Cathy Feser of the Collier County Extension Service. The plants grow into a thick mat on the ground, taking over flower beds and even propagating in the crowns of palms, as they had in Volcy’s yard.

• Rosary pea. "It’s invasive and highly poisonous," Feser warned. The slender vining plant with alternate and compound leaves of 8 to 15 leaflets develops pods of brilliant red berries, each with a single black spot. They are so dangerous tourists who bought necklaces of them in the tropics became ill just wearing them; allegedly one chewed seed can be lethal.

• The Norfolk Pine, which, in Volcy’s yard had stubby branches growing where Hurricane Wilma had lopped some off. The trees have found homes around many local yards, and they’re dangerous, says David McCarthy, co-owner of Timber’s Tree Service. McCarthy and his partner, Stuart Fox, were handling the bucket truck themselves Wednesday to guide the tree away from a stand of bromeliads that will be recycled in the yard’s shadier spots.

"What happens is the top breaks off during hurricanes. Or they lose branches that never really grow back," he said.

"So many people get them as little Christmas trees and they’re so cute in those pots," he said, holding his hands at the height most are sold during the holidays, about 18 inches. "So people put them in the yard somewhere, and five years later, they’re towering over everything."

During its walk-through, the evaluation team also found some tough survivors that can be rehabilitated: the bromeliads; sweet-smelling Confederate jasmine, twining around a front-porch trellis; kalanchoe with the remains of this season’s orange blooms; and a hot-pink bougainvillea climbing a tree in the side yard.

The team that’s putting together the landscaping plan want to save as much as they can of its assets. Right now, Haner said, the team can only afford to landscape the northern half area in front of the house.

"If we get more participants, we can expand the footprint," she said.

Either way, Volcy’s Cinderella yard promises to be an inviting petri dish of responsible landscaping. Even as Clarence Tears Jr., director of the Big Cypress Basin Service Center, was watching the scraggly Norfolk Pine go down Wednesday, a curious developer pulled up and began asking questions. It’s just what Volcy said she’s hoping to do by making her plighted yard public.

"I would like for this yard to be a beautiful yard and demonstrate that you can have low maintenance and low water requirements — and to teach our children" the value of responsible landscaping, she said.

"If people can drive by, they can appreciate the efforts, what everyone has done here — when everyone works together, with the right person doing the right job, and as they say, ‘the right plant in the right place.’ "

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FOR MORE

You can follow the progress of the "X-treme Makeover" at 7050 Trail Blvd. with the Naples Daily News and the South Florida Water Management District.

• Today, both in print and online: the groundbreaking and the hopes for the yard to come.

• Next Saturday in At Home: Getting out the baddies, with photos of plants in the Volcy yard that range from a nuisance to downright dangerous.

• Saturday, May 31, in At Home: Planning the landscape, with an explanation of what will determine the plantings in the yard and where they go.

• Saturday, June 7, in At Home: Recycling plants to make the most of the yard that Daphne Volcy has.

• Saturday, June 14, in At Home: Planning irrigation and how to avoid common mistakes in installing it.

• Saturday, June 21, in At Home: The "new" grass that’s going into the Volcy yard, and where to put turf to make it work with Florida water restrictions.

• Friday, June 27, in Neapolitan: Cinderella ready for the ball. A visit to the Volcy yard before its open house on June 28, including a landscaping diagram.

Both will carry updates on the makeover online as well at these sites:

• www.naplesnews.com

• www.sfwmd.gov

• Or call SFWMD at 263-7615.