bringing nature, nurseries and gardeners together Jan 23, 2020
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Free trees from TreeFolks From 10 a.m. - 1 p.m. on Feb. 1 this amazing local organization will hand out free trees to Austinites in the parking lot of the HEB at Manchaca and Slaughter Lane. (It's best to arrive early - these events are hugely popular.) TreeFolks ❦
How to prune grape vines In this free class at the Natural Gardener you will learn about 'an intricate pruning and train-ing program' for these luscious food-bearing plants. Saturday, 10. a.m. Natural Gardener ❦
Oliver Sacks on gardening: 'As a writer, I find gardens essential to the creative process; as a physician, I take my patients to gardens whenever possible. . . . In forty years of medical practice, I have found only two types of non-pharmaceutical “therapy” to be vitally important for patients with chronic neurological diseases: music and gardens.'
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Living from the land: last year writer Rob Greenfield set himself a challenge: to grow and forage 100% of his food. 'No grocery stores, no restaurants, not even a drink at a bar. Nature was my garden, my pantry and my pharmacy.'
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a d v e r t i s e m e n t
Thursday Morning Landscape
design and installation,
free consultation Call Dwight: 512 913 2189
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Central Texas Gardener: In San Antonio, the Guerreros put a new spin on an old garden with artistic patterns and revived cast-offs. Daphne explores freeze damage on citrus and ficus, and Sheryl Williams plays matchmaker with companion plants.
Saturday. 4 p.m. Sunday 9 a.m. KLRU ❦
 In Praise of Native Trees
by William Glenn
“The one who plants trees, knowing that he will never sit in their shade, has at least started to understand the meaning of life.” (Rabindranath Tagore)
Just about every time my wife and I take a morning walk through our little neighborhood, she politely endures the trained-parrot of a husband (me) that squawks, “Eh, look at that, they got lucky. The builders gave ‘em a Live Oak.”
She could easily finish the rest of my polemic. “Sycamores and Arizona Ash are falling apart, we really need to plant some long-lived trees quick so this place isn’t treeless in 10 years.
"Why aren’t people planting new trees? Everyone ought to plant at least one oak. It’s so easy! What, they don’t want shade?”
You’re right, that‘s obnoxious. Still, though, I want to sledgehammer my obnoxious point here. Plant a good tree!
This area used to boast a mixed woodland prairie with seas of Post Oaks, Blackjack Oaks, a whole myriad of shrubs and grasses “up to a horse’s eye.”
Our little enclave can support everything from diminutive Orchid Trees to El Generalissimo himself; the commanding Coastal Live Oak. Why not?
You see, when many Austin neighborhoods were built out, and trees chosen for the new houses, they were selected because they grew quickly, not for their long life spans.
Arizona Ash was probably the most common in the 50’s and 60’s, and they seem to really only live for 50 or 60 years. Currently, they’re in different throes of decline, or, gracing the lawn in their best form of all—a stump.
I hope you consider planting a great native tree along side your doomed Arizona Ash. Think of popping in a Monterrey or Lacey Oak while it’s still cool outside, and the new sapling can develop in the dappled light of the outgoing tree.
It’s a natural state for a new tree to grow up under a mature tree’s canopy. Take a look outside. Do you see any place that could use a new tree? ❦
William Glenn is senior sales manager at Barton Springs Nursery.
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