The window of the Apopka Florist shop looks out onto a strip mall parking lot and the afternoon traffic rolling down East Main Street.
“Sitting right here, what do we have out there for our landscaping?” store owner Bill Vincent said with a tired glance toward the road. “Cars.”
And like the shrubs and palm trees that have arrived and died along this drag of U.S. Highway 441 through the years, the city’s attempts to revitalize the area have had a tendency to wither, Vincent said.