- Landscape design and gardening is the oldest form of Eco Art.

For me, I go another step further in saying, it solves environmental issues.

(cool upbeat music) (gentle music) All artists go through periods in their life that cause them to take one avenue or another.

As my children got older, I decided I needed to get a real job.

Late in life and still searching.

I answered an ad in the paper to become a professional ballroom dance instructor and I thought at age 43, I'm too old for that.

But as it turned out, I wasn't.

I was a good educator and a good instructor.

(soft music) I had my students dance on different substrates, different material, different floors, and I wanted to capture the footwork that they were doing and see if I could capture it in paint and take photographs of the images that the footprints left.

I found that I was able to identify different ballroom dances by the different patterns on the floor that were left, the residue on the floor.

The more research I did about the environment and how I related that to ballroom dance elements and technique, the more I got into and started researching artists that were involved in environmental art, earth art, land art, anything that was outside of the gallery.

I left that job to move in to stay-home with my parents.

My father died and my mother was disabled.

So rather than put her in a home, I left my job and stayed here in her house to take care of her.

The plants became a respite for me.

(gentle music) This is where I made a transition into a real serious art career.

I was able to start expressing myself and my artwork through the environment.

My property outside became my studio.

(softly splashing water) Even Monet considered his masterpiece to be his gardening, not necessarily his paintings of the gardening, but the gardening itself and his gardens were a masterful.

I personally consider my masterpiece to be the caring of my mom.

I started buying and learning more about native plants and why they're important.

That's when I started really thinking about design and landscape design in particular.

- Pamela's been working with us for a number of years now and she started out helping at the nursery and Pamela fit the bill, especially with her art background.

She really is able to create artful landscapes by combining the her artist capabilities with her knowledge of native plants.

It's important to use native plants because as more and more of Florida is developed, we're losing a lot of our natural habitat, and along with that, a lot of our birds and butterflies and wildlife.

So the more native plants you can use by providing wildlife, cover wildlife food with a lot of shrubs or trees that provide berries or seeds that a lot of birds can use.

We have about 15 different host plants which are the plants.

The adult butterfly lays its eggs on.

Without those plants in the environment or in the landscape, you lose a large population of your butterflies and other beneficial insects that depend on all these native plants.

- I had a few different landscapers but they just didn't understand what I was trying to go for and what I was trying to accomplish by having a habitat for the wildlife.

She could accomplish what I wanted to accomplish from a scientific background but she could also help me make it beautiful.

- Today, we're gonna work on the curb appeal of Alison's home.

What I discovered was that there's a brick, pathway already, defining certain areas, so I'm gonna clear that away and bring that back to surface.

Landscape design has become the forefront of what I do now.

It's not just about designing the outside of your property.

Plants are not ornaments.

Plants are very specific-life sources for all of us, not just humans.

- Most modern landscapes are the wow effect, so they use a lot of plants that really aren't suited for the house.

They aren't suited for the neighborhood.

They're suited more for a instant visual effect.

- We've destroyed what the true Florida really is.

It has become the norm to bulldoze an entire ecosystem, build human habitat, fine, but replace it with the ecosystem that you took out.

Wildlife and plants will live without us but we can't live without them.

(light intense music)