More Texas gardeners are choosing native plants after 2023’s brutal weather—attracting bees, butterflies, and lower water bills.
Under a gazebo in the South Texas Plains area at the San Antonio Botanical Garden, Michael Eason, who collects and curates the garden’s vast array of native plants, is addressing members of the Williamson County chapter of the Native Plant Society of Texas. Pointing out several unusual specimens, Eason describes how he traveled 300 miles to collect them in far West Texas. “I don’t know exactly how many plants we have planted that are rare,” he said.
This year’s harsh weather will likely spike native plant sales, just as it did after the drought of 2011, after Hurricane Harvey in 2017, and after Winter Storm Uri in 2021, said James Plyler, the sales manager for Texas Native Nursery, a wholesale native plant grower that produced 1.8 million plants in the last year, which it sold to retail nurseries and landscape companies around the state.
In Texas, the movement to plant natives in both home and commercial landscapes gained momentum in the 1980s, with the founding of the Texas Native Plant Society and the publication of Contrasting textures and colors of native plants, like the Texas sotol in the background and the yellow green fishhook barrel cactus in the foreground, add interest to a native garden. These plants are in the South Texas Plains exhibit at the San Antonio Botanical Garden.Eventually, Eason would like to see home gardeners be able to plant “a representation of their local flora” in their landscape.
Commonly called Jimson Weed , this is native to Texas but all parts of the plant are poisonous. After white trumpet-like flowers bloom, seed pods like these are formed.This fall, two new nurseries devoted to selling natives, The Nectar Bar and Pollinatives, opened in San Antonio. The owner of Pollinatives, Donald Gerber, is a master naturalist and Native Plant Society member.
If every single person would make a 10-foot by four-foot space and dedicate it with native plants then we are doing our part to put the diversity back.
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