Wildlife visitors attracted to the garden have included owls, a rose breasted grosbeak plus the regular woodpeckers, cardinals, blue jays and mockingbirds and butterflies. Sources for native plants include friends, plants donated at the Native Plant Meetings, the Heights Garden Club plant and seed swap, local seasonal plant sales (Arboretum, Fall Bulb and Plant Mart, and the Native Plant Society workshop) and our great local nurseries (Audubon Natives Nursery, Buchanan’s Native Plants, Joshua’s Native Plant
The gardens are broken into unique spaces with different light, heat, and drainage qualities. This gives them the opportunity to trial plants and satisfy their desire to collect unique specimens. With the changes in weather, they carefully observe how different plants handle different conditions, using this information to design easier-to-maintain gardens for others. The Right of Way Garden, with 3 large sycamore trees, has become a native plant garden with its good drainage due to the trees soaking up wate
Twenty years ago when I was searching for a house in The Heights, one of my biggest requirements was a sunny yard for growing. I started by creating a 'practice bed' in the backyard and filled it with random perennials that looked interesting or that I knew from growing in Austin. It did not take long to learn that Houston has a climate all its own. Then one bed became two, then three, then four to six. We discovered surprises that only an old lot could bring in the form of hundreds of pounds of broken bric