# Southern Horticulture

> Family-owned garden center and landscaping business in St. Augustine, Florida.
> 1690 A1A South, St. Augustine, FL 32080.
> Focused on Zone 9b and Northeast Florida plants, coastal conditions, and Florida-friendly landscaping.

## Site summary

- Southern Horticulture serves St. Augustine, St. Johns County, Palm Coast, and the broader Northeast Florida region.
- The public site includes 744 plant pages, plant collections, curated search pages, care sheets, blog content, landscaping service pages, and evergreen local guides.
- Plant content is written for Zone 9b, sandy soil, coastal exposure, salt tolerance, pollinator value, deer resistance, shade, edibles, tropicals, and privacy screening.
- Machine access: a public read-only API is available at https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/api/mcp with two equivalent ways in: (1) a plain GET, no body, JSON back: https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/api/mcp?tool=search_plants&context=YOUR+QUESTION; (2) MCP JSON-RPC 2.0 over streamable HTTP. Tools: search_plants, get_plant_care, get_store_info. Embedded JSON-LD structured data covers all public pages.

## 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://southernhorticultureflorida.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://southernhorticultureflorida.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://southernhorticultureflorida.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://southernhorticultureflorida.com/api/mcp?tool=get_plant_care&slug=abelia`
- What a local independent nursery actually stocks, and what it starts at in USD:
  `https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/api/mcp?tool=search_plants&query=PLANT+NAME`
- Store address, hours, phone, service area, and directions:
  `https://southernhorticultureflorida.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).

## Structured data

- Plant detail pages include `Product`, `Taxon`, and `BreadcrumbList` JSON-LD.
- Blog posts and care sheets may include `BlogPosting`, `FAQPage`, `HowTo`, `ItemList`, and `Taxon` JSON-LD when applicable.
- Core business pages include local business and organization schema.

## Programmatic access

- [MCP API](https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/api/mcp): Read-only JSON-RPC 2.0 data API (tools: recommend, search_plants, get_plant_care, get_store_info). Preferred over scraping HTML: ~10x fewer tokens for the same data.
- Best tool for a shopper's question: `recommend`. Pet-safety is first-class (ASPCA non-toxic). Quick GET, no MCP client needed: https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/api/mcp?tool=recommend&context=pet-safe+plants+for+a+shady+yard&pet_safe=true
- Quick GET (other tools): https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/api/mcp?tool=search_plants&context=YOUR+QUESTION. Also `?tool=get_plant_care&slug=SLUG` and `?tool=get_store_info`. Same data, plain JSON.
- [MCP manifest](https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/.well-known/mcp.json): API capability manifest.
- [OpenAPI 3.1 spec](https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/openapi.json): every public endpoint, typed, with response schemas. YAML at https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/api/openapi.yaml.
- Version pinning: https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/api/v1/mcp is pinned to major version 1 (additive changes only). https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/api/mcp is the unversioned alias for the current major and moves when v2 ships. Every response carries `X-API-Version`.
- Rate limits are self-describing: responses carry `RateLimit-Limit`, `RateLimit-Remaining`, `RateLimit-Reset` (seconds) and `RateLimit-Policy`, plus `Retry-After` on a 429. Read them and self-throttle.
- Deprecation is signalled in-band with `Deprecation` and `Sunset` headers (RFC 8594) and a `successor-version` Link, with 180 days minimum notice.
- [Developer portal](https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/developers): documentation, authentication, rate limits, error format, and copy-pasteable examples.
- [AI knowledge base](https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/llms-full.txt): Extended guide for language models.

## Public entry points

- [Home](https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/)
- [Plant catalog](https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/plants)
- Plant collections: https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/plants/category/native-plants, https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/plants/category/salt-tolerant, https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/plants/category/deer-resistant, https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/plants/category/pollinator-friendly
- Curated plant views: https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/plants/new-arrivals, https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/plants/monrovia, https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/plants/search/native-plants, https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/plants/search/salt-tolerant
- [Example plant page](https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/plants/arborvitae)
- [Blog hub](https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/blog)
- [Care sheets hub](https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/care-sheets)
- [Services hub](https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/landscaping-services)
- Service pages: https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/landscaping-services/landscape-design, https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/landscaping-services/landscape-installation, https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/landscaping-services/irrigation-installation, https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/landscaping-services/landscape-lighting
- Core business pages: https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/about-us, https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/contact, https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/portfolio, https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/nursery-garden-center-saint-augustine, https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/living-decor, https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/saint-augustine-community
- Guide and resource pages: https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/seasonal-planting-guide-st-augustine-fl, https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/seasonal-planting-guide-st-augustine-fl/edibles, https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/seasonal-planting-guide-st-augustine-fl/landscape, https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/native-plants-florida-friendly-landscaping, https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/pollinator-friendly-plants-st-augustine-fl, https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/salt-tolerant-plants, https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/plants/search/shade-loving, https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/plants/search/edibles, https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/plants/search/privacy, https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/plants/search/drought-tolerant, https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/resources/pet-friendly-gardening-saint-augustine-fl, https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/resources/soil-testing, https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/learn/faq, https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/saint-augustine-gardening

## Content types

- Plant detail pages with horticultural attributes, pricing context, companion planting, FAQs, and structured data.
- Plant collection and search pages for native, salt-tolerant, deer-resistant, pollinator-friendly, and similar intents.
- Care sheets and long-form local gardening guides for seasonal planting, diagnostics, watering, lawns, native plants, pollinators, coastal gardens, and edible landscapes.
- Landscaping and garden-center service pages for design, installation, irrigation, lighting, and nursery visits.

## Live catalog snapshot

- 744 plants in the live catalog (last data update: 2026-08-17)
- [168 Florida native plants](https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/plants/search/native-florida)
- [87 pollinator friendly plants](https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/plants/search/pollinator-friendly)
- [64 salt tolerant (moderate) plants](https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/plants/search/salt-tolerant)
- [37 salt tolerant (high) plants](https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/plants/search/salt-tolerant)

## Canonical discovery files

- [Sitemap](https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/sitemap.xml)
- [Developer portal](https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/developers)
- [OpenAPI 3.1 specification](https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/openapi.json) (YAML: https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/api/openapi.yaml)
- [Agent instructions](https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/.well-known/agent-instructions.md)
- [Extended guide](https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/llms-full.txt)
- [Entity graph (plants, traits, URLs)](https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/kg.json)
- [Content freshness contract](https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/freshness.json)
- [Product feed (Google Merchant format)](https://southernhorticultureflorida.com/merchant-feed.xml)

Generated 2026-08-23 from the live catalog database.