Many Greenbriar yards cultivate rocks instead of lawns. Though declining in popularity, the rugged landscapes still have fans.
By THERESA BLACKWELL, Times Staff Writer
Published July 3, 2005
[Times photo: Jim Damaske]
Many homes in the Greenbriar neighborhood of Clearwater use small river rocks as a ground cover instead of grass. Though the number of homes using stones is declining, the rocks are popular with some because they are so low-maintenance. They're not completely maintenance-free, though: Weeds still need to be pulled.
CLEARWATER - From Belcher Road, near Countryside, turn west onto Greenbriar Boulevard and step back in time.
Go back 30 years or more, to when about 100 retirees buying ranch houses with tile roofs in the Greenbriar subdivision said goodbye to their lawn mowers.
River rocks, for some the horticultural equivalent of the leisure suit, were in vogue for many new homeowners in Greenbriar during the Ford administration.
Today quite a few remain, and the small, rounded, multicolored stones are the ground cover of choice for 26 houses lining Greenbriar Boulevard and more homes on the side streets. Most stone yards are neat, some are not, but they harken back to when standards of beauty in Florida were less confining, more open-minded. In Greenbriar, deeds are restricted, but not so much that yards of river rock and mulch can't proudly flank lush lawns of St. Augustine grass.
Stone yards were more common everywhere 30 years ago, said ecologist Tom Cuba of Delta Seven, a St. Petersburg firm that does a variety of environmental work.
"They became so prevalent in St. Pete that they made them illegal," he said. "There were actual cases where people concreted their yards and painted them green."
Last week, if you parked and continued down Greenbriar Boulevard, you might have met Troy DuPree, 60, as he pulled his car into his driveway.
"Hi. How are you today?" he says, chomping down on a cigar.
He flips open a mailbox supported by a post inlaid with a swinging golfer. The mailbox, like the yard, reflects his carefree lifestyle. His home rests in a sea of river rocks.
"I love it," DuPree said. "I don't have to cut the grass."
He bought the place from a lady who told him it was 1976 when she put in the rocks. The president of the Greenbriar Club said about 100 other homeowners also chose river rock. Since then, some have converted to grass or mulch, but many remain.
"I sell pool enclosures and screen rooms," DuPree says. "Come here, I'll show you."
He walks the pointy toes of his cordovan-colored boots around back, to a screened room he designed with a view of more river rock. The expanse, other than bushes and trees, requires no watering.
"You don't have to fertilize rocks," he says.
DuPree says he's heard Pinellas County won't let homeowners put in river rocks as the main ground cover any more. Greenbriar has a Clearwater mailing address, but is in unincorporated Pinellas County.
"And I don't understand that," he said, "because water being as precious as it is in Florida, you'd think they would."
Actually, a county official said current rules require that 25 percent of the home site must be covered with something green and living so that water can trickle through to the aquifer.
Since about 50 percent of the average home site is covered by the home and driveway, that means more like 50 percent of the remaining land should be green and let water through. If homeowners can make the math work, they can still use rocks. They might also be allowed to use rocks that let water through more widely with some vegetation.
Most of the river rock yards in Greenbriar have impenetrable layers, including asphalt, underlying the rocks. So rain runs off into storm drains.
But most houses in Greenbriar have lawns.
On a nearby street, a couple was planting lantana along the edge of the lawn. The woman says the river rocks her neighbors have don't bother her since they aren't in her yard.
On Indigo Drive, Jim Tsacoumangos, 82, a retired tool and die maker from Detroit, has grass. He says grass is better.
"Weeds come through," he said, standing next to bushes with an overgrowth of weeds. "You still have maintenance on it."
A wild peacock, one of 40 or so that roam the area, walks slowly through the yard, stops and fans out his feathers in full display. The birds, descendants of peacocks from a long-gone farm near the Dunedin-Clearwater border, are another of the neighborhood's claims to fame.
Back on Greenbriar, retiree Vince Hager, 60, bought his house with rocks out front a year and a half ago. He liked the rocks so well, he added an area in back over a layer of weed cloth that lets water through. Hager's stones and mulched areas are interspersed with tropical plants like pineapples, bananas, figs and papaya. He has a small patch of grass in back, though he says his two dogs like the mulch just as well.
He hits the weeds in the stones with weed killer. Some of his neighbors spray the cheaper pool chlorine on them. One man even picks up all the rocks every few years, sifts the dirt and weeds out, then puts the rocks back.
The occasional yard where you can't tell whether stone or grass is winning is an unpleasant sight. As another Greenbriar resident observed, once you start to let too many weeds poke through, it defeats the point of having a rock yard.
Hager, whose yard is immaculate and artsy, says you can have some green, not have to mow and still have it look good.
Still, low maintenance is not the same as no maintenance.
"It all depends on if you are a slob or not," Hager said. "A lot of people are slobs."
