Don’t forget that your applications for the free money to beautify landscaping around your community are due June 8 at noon!

Broward Beautiful Community Grants Program will give you anywhere from $1500 to $10,000 for a project providing it’s on public property or common areas visible to the general public.

You can spruce up a small park, right of way or entranceway to your community, in any community in Davie, Cooper City, Weston, wherever, because the grant is countywide.

Gated communities have a bit of a speedbump because they can only apply for projects outside the gates, however, it is still a worthwhile effort because many gated communities have more than one entrance and many borders.

There are rules. You can only use the money for plants, sod and mulch. And out of the set of plants allowed, at least half have to be Florida native plants.

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection has defined native as “a species that occurred in Florida at the time of European contact or 1500” … that grow naturally in our area, without our interference.

They include arrowroot, coontie and wild lime, and can attract butterflies as well as people. For a list click here.

And it all has to meet code.

Last weekend, a group of Dania Beach Heights Civic Association volunteers “regreened” the area at the Florida East Coast Railway on Fourth Avenue and Stirling Road, a once-drab façade within the first incorporated city in Broward County.

According to Miami Herald reporter Eileen Soler , more than 1600 eco-friendly flora were planted at the site to attract birds and wildlife, and neighbors, to each other.

Soler said the project was funded through a $10,000 grant from Broward Beautiful, a county program that funds landscape and environmental projects for nonprofit groups.

This project, wrote Soler, is also supposed to beautify a one-of-a-kind proposed Broward County route, known as the Dixie Highway Greenway , which will link many of the east cities’ historic main and downtown areas through a multi-purpose trail that starts in Deerfield Beach at Pioneer Park and ends in Hallandale Beach at Bluesten Park.

College Homesites in Dania are just one of the many areas currently enjoying the new foliage.

Builders are constructing “The Milan at Town Center,” a 125-foot tall building that is classified as an “A” office structure, a business center of the highest quality. The area will include several luxuries such as a rooftop dining establishment. The building is the first class “A” business real estate in Boca Raton developed in twenty years. There are several major companies that will work in the Milan including Comerica Bank and one of Palm Beach County’s successful independent accounting firms, Goldstein, Lewis & Co.

But businesses are not the only ones who will benefit from the new structure. To accommodate the Milan, Boca Raton officials will ease traffic by installing a right turn lane southbound from Military Trail to the Town Center and extending northbound left turn lane into Town Center Road. Drivers leaving from their homes in Boca Raton to work won’t have to deal with so much traffic problems in this area.