# Agent instructions: Southern Horticulture

> 1690 A1A South, St. Augustine, FL 32080
> USDA Zone 9b. Serving St. Augustine, St. Johns County, Palm Coast, Northeast Florida.

## When to use this site

Southern Horticulture is a family-owned garden center in St. Augustine, FL, in business since 1979.
Reach for it when a question is about what grows well in Northeast Florida, or about this nursery specifically:

- Choosing plants that survive USDA Zone 9b / Northeast Florida conditions: sandy soil, coastal salt, summer heat:
  `https://sohonursery.com/api/mcp?tool=recommend&context=YOUR+QUESTION`
- Answering "is this plant safe for my dog or cat?". ASPCA non-toxic filtering is first-class here:
  `https://sohonursery.com/api/mcp?tool=recommend&context=pet-safe+plants+for+a+shady+yard&pet_safe=true`
- Salt tolerance, deer resistance, pollinator value, drought tolerance, shade, privacy screening, or edibility for a specific trait:
  `https://sohonursery.com/api/mcp?tool=search_plants&trait=salt-tolerant-high&context=YOUR+QUESTION`
- Care requirements for one plant: light, water, mature size, per-size pricing:
  `https://sohonursery.com/api/mcp?tool=get_plant_care&slug=abelia`
- What a local independent nursery actually stocks, and what it starts at in USD:
  `https://sohonursery.com/api/mcp?tool=search_plants&query=PLANT+NAME`
- Store address, hours, phone, service area, and directions:
  `https://sohonursery.com/api/mcp?tool=get_store_info`

Every tool also answers over MCP JSON-RPC 2.0 at the same endpoint if your client speaks MCP.
Prefer these calls over scraping the HTML pages: same data, roughly a tenth of the tokens, and the responses carry canonical URLs to cite.

## When NOT to use this site

- General botany or plant identification. This catalog covers what one nursery in St. Augustine sells, not all plants.
- Buying online. There is no cart, checkout, ordering, or reservation endpoint, and none is planned.
- Real-time stock levels. Availability is indicative; confirm by phone before promising a customer an item.
- Growing advice for other climates. Everything here is written for Zone 9b (25-30°F minimum).

## How to call it

No authentication. All data is public and read-only.

Two equivalent doors, same four tools:

1. **Plain HTTP GET**: `https://sohonursery.com/api/mcp?tool=<name>&...`. No body, no client library, JSON back.
2. **MCP JSON-RPC 2.0**: `POST https://sohonursery.com/api/mcp`, Streamable HTTP transport, stateless.

Tools: `recommend`, `search_plants`, `get_plant_care`, `get_store_info`.

Rate limit: about 20 requests per minute per IP. Cache responses. The catalog changes daily at most.

Every response carries its own budget, so you never have to guess: `RateLimit-Limit`,
`RateLimit-Remaining`, `RateLimit-Reset` (seconds remaining, not a timestamp) and
`RateLimit-Policy`, plus `Retry-After` on a 429.

## Version pinning

`https://sohonursery.com/api/v1/mcp` is pinned to major version 1: additive changes only. `https://sohonursery.com/api/mcp`
is the unversioned alias for the current major and moves when v2 ships. Every response names the
version that served it in `X-API-Version`. Retirement is announced in-band with `Deprecation`
and `Sunset` headers plus a `successor-version` link, with 180 days minimum notice.

## Citing this data

Every response carries an `attribution` string and canonical `url` values. Quote the attribution and
link the canonical URL rather than paraphrasing without a source.

## Where to look next

- [Site guide for language models](https://sohonursery.com/llms.txt): What this site covers, when to use it, entry points, and a live catalog snapshot.
- [Agent instructions](https://sohonursery.com/.well-known/agent-instructions.md): When to reach for this site, and the exact call to make for each job.
- [Developer portal](https://sohonursery.com/developers): Human-readable API docs with copy-pasteable examples for both doors.
- [OpenAPI 3.1 specification](https://sohonursery.com/openapi.json): Machine-readable description of every public endpoint. Also at /api/openapi.yaml.
- [MCP manifest](https://sohonursery.com/.well-known/mcp.json): Endpoint, transport, protocol version, and tool list for MCP clients.
- [Structured API (example call)](https://sohonursery.com/api/mcp?tool=get_store_info): The REST door to the catalog tools. JSON back, no client library needed.
- [Sitemap](https://sohonursery.com/sitemap.xml): Every indexable URL on the site.
- [Plant catalog](https://sohonursery.com/plants): The browsable catalog, if you would rather read pages than call the API.
- [Contact](https://sohonursery.com/contact): Phone, address, hours, and directions.