Passport to Texas

Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife

Saving water and lush landscapes aren’t mutually exclusive. Gretchen Mahan tells us more…

At the San Antonio Botanical Gardens, six miniature houses on WaterSavers Lane showcase diverse landscapes and their water saving potential. Sir Oliver Smith, a master gardener, describes the typical landscape, complete with a water thirsty lawn.

This is what most people have. They have the traditional hedges at the door and all that manicuring you have to do every week. So this is probably what we don’t want if you want to save on money and save on grass and save on water.

For comparison, he points out an attractive landscape that replaces turf with groundcover.

People like this look; it’s a little less maintenance. And you’re replacing some of the lawn with Asiatic jasmine, which takes no water.

While the jasmine isn’t native, most of the other plants are. This helps save water because native plants generally require less of it survive.

Everyone thinks native plants are just a sticky agarita and the yuccas and the sotals. But all the other things in this garden are native. Vitex and desert willow and redbud and there are a lot of other things that do very well with almost no water.

And they’re beautiful. Contact your local Extension Service to find out which native plants thrive in your area.

Thanks, Gretchen. That’s our show…Find pictures and more information at passporttotexas.org. For Texas Parks and Wildlife I’m Cecilia Nasti.

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