Building shelters is pretty old school. I've done it and Florida has palmetto palms which are prime shelter material. The fronds can easily be woven into a wind and rainproof panel and the panel grouped to form a lean-to or, with enough effort, a comfortable hut.

It used to be popular in the 20s and 30s to create elaborate shelters, camp beds and various accouterments but it went out of fashion as more people got into the woods and the damage became clear to even the the most callous observers. Some early Boyscout jamboree sites still show obvious damage after sixty years.

Constructing a shelter out of saplings and brush isn't often done any more. Even in survival situations. Mostly because there are better options, most emergency shelters center around a tent or tarp which can produce a wind and rainproof shelter in a couple of minutes. You could spend a lot of time and effort building a shelter using vegetation and end up with something half as good as what you could get in two minutes with a tarp. Even lacking a tarp or tent a brush shelter usually doesn't require you to chop anything.