Archive for December 9th, 2010

Cool Weather Wildscaping

Thursday, December 9th, 2010

This is Passport to Texas

One of the things we tout about Wildscapes—which are landscapes comprised of native wildflowers and other native plants that provide food and shelter for wildlife—is how little maintenance they require once established.

That doesn’t make them entirely carefree, though.

Dr. Damon Waitt, senior botanist at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, says fall and winter can keep a body busy working on Wildscapes.

Fall and winter are both great times to start working on the wildflowers that we don’t think of as wildflowers: our trees and shrubs. And so, you can be planting trees and shrubs, you can be doing tree and shrub maintenance, pruning, and trimming your plants back—your small perennial, herbaceous plants—your lantanas, and things like that. You know, getting rid of that brush so the plants have room to grow the following spring. You can be collecting leaves and vegetative material from your plants to start your mulch pile, so you have mulch. There’s lots of things you can do in the garden in fall and winter.

So, if you thought you were free of yard work until spring…sorry.

That’s our show….we receive support from the Wildlife Restoration program…working to protect and preserve wildlife habitat in Texas….For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.