- Howdy, I'm John Hart Asher!

This week on Central Texas Gardener, meet Ashley and Carlos Monteros who turned their first backyard into a Southwest cottage habitat.

To chronicle the monarch butterfly migration to Canada and back, Sara Dykman's trek illustrates how three countries unite as wildlife stewards.

Daphne Richards answers your questions, plus, see how to garden in clay soil with designer Leah Churner.

So, let's get growing, right here, right now!

- [Announcer] Central Texas Gardener is made possible by the generous support from Lisa and Desi Rhoden.

Thank you.

(cheerful music) (cheerful music continues) - A fence and a lawn.

Well, that's what faced thrifty first-time gardeners Ashley Nava-Monteros and Carlos Monteros at their new house.

Now, art and plants honor cultural history and support wildlife with native and adapted plants that can thrive on clay soil.

Carlos loves succulents and shows how to propagate a prickly pear cactus and makes recipes from its nopales.

- So I would describe our garden as a Southwest cottage.

So I really love cottage gardens.

I just love all of the flowers.

Carlos seems to be more of the cacti enthusiast.

Hi, I'm Ashley Nava-Monteros.

- And I'm Carlos Monteros.

- We bought this house back in November 2020.

When we moved in, it was nothing but turf.

Right?

- Yeah.

Bermudagrass.

- After the big freeze is when we really just started working on it.

The backyard was originally on a slope, so we saw that slope as an opportunity to really just play, play with the way that the water runs, play with different kinds of plants that we could have, being that we are on Blackland Prairie and on heavy clay soil.

It's either wet and heavy or dry and you can't get through it.

- It's all cracked.

- Yeah.

- Almost separates, right?

- Yeah.

- [Carlos] The limestone creates the border.

- [Ashley] I love the limestone.

I love the orange and just the white and how it really makes the the flowers pop.

- So we gradually started peeling away the grass from that corner all the way to this corner.

I wanted to establish the bigger stuff first, right?

So I put the trees, you know, put maybe like one tree on each corner.

- Originally there was two huisaches until we watched an episode of Central Texas Gardener and we learned about girdling roots.

- Yeah.

- And Carlos went to work, discovered that both plants had girdling roots.

Unfortunately, this one did not survive.

- The more drought tolerant stuff are at the top, and then gradually I wanted to put the plants that tolerate more of the wet feet- - Closer to the bottom.

It's so funny because we've had friends come over, and they're like, oh my god, how much did this cost you?

And not a lot, because all of the limestone we've sourced actually from behind, where the tree is at.

We would grab some of, like, there's just so many rocks there, we'd get it, we'd throw them over the fence.

That was a journey.

That was an endeavor.

There's people always giving out free material all the time.

All it takes is a little imagination.

- I'm just trying to figure out what works best with the materials that I have available, you know, without breaking the bank.

- [Ashley] A lot of this garden has been inspired by CTG.

That's where we discovered a lot of the plants that are native to this region or more adaptable and tend to be more drought tolerant.

So it's just been a whole process of learning about different plants, going to the nursery, checking them out, and then just figuring out, okay, like, where can we place them?

- My intention is to have a garden to where it's minimal upkeep and it's also paying respect to the the plants and the wildlife that were already here before we got here.

- The mealy blue sage had so many bumblebees throughout the summer.

The birds, the bees, the butterflies come in, and just seeing how minimal effort it took in some ways, right?

I mean, just having a birdbath, having a bird feeder and having the plants and just kind of creating that habitat, right?

And I think that's part of the reason why we have such a productive vegetable garden, too, is because of the pollinators.

We have so many chilies and tomatoes and squash.

You give them a little something, then they give you a little something back.

So we were growing Mexican squash or calabacitas because we're big calabacita fans.

Anything, just, again, something that just reminds us of home.

We would make quesadillas with the the flowers, right?

You just kind of fry them up a little bit with some onion and garlic and make delicious quesadillas.

We found that planting marigolds really kept the pests away.

- Another thing that we wanted to do is get rid of as much grass as possible.

So I think that's why we started doing the islands because that island wasn't as big maybe a couple of months ago, so we made the island bigger because that's a Mexican buckeye.

- Copper Canyon, we didn't know how big it was going to be.

It really just kind of took off and did its own thing and we're like, okay, so I guess you need a dedicated spot.

The wheelbarrow we found in the side of the road.

Carlos likes to go for jogs, and he called me and he was like, hey, there's a little wheelbarrow here.

Do you want me to go and get it?

And I'm like, yes.

We went ahead and just kind of put little different kinds of cacti and agaves in there and added some friends, too.

Carlos's mom likes to get these little figurines from Juarez.

And then when he went to Guadalajara with his mom, he came back with a tequila plant, which is his baby.

He's always having to bring it in whenever he sees the temperatures are starting to drop.

He likes to collect cacti and agaves from different areas.

So we're originally from El Paso and, you know, he'll see a cacti and he'll pull a little paddle.

- I also carry a knife with me.

It's a habit, because I was in the Navy, so it's always good to have a multi-tool or a knife.

And I just, you know, I cut off a paddle and then let it dry and, you know, I have a new plant after that.

So I usually get something that's a little bit more tender, but this is good, and then I can just twist it off.

This nopal, I actually got it from a Mexican supermarket.

If you want to, I just got it from a Mexican supermarket.

You just let it dry for maybe a couple of weeks, and you put it in dirt, and that's what I got.

And then how you harvest it is you just start going like that.

You see that?

But my knife isn't that sharp.

I like to eat nopales with eggs.

Super good.

You can either saute them or boil them as well.

You can actually make a nopalito salad, and that's super easy.

So that's what I basically do, and then the other side, and then just clean it, rinse it, and basically eat it after you boil it.

You can even eat it raw, honesty.

So we come from central El Paso and specifically our neighborhood, there's maybe five, six Virgin murals within a one-mile radius.

So I think it was important for us to put the Virgin.

It's kind of like a calling from back home.

And then, you know, she's a matriarch of not just the nation, but she's the matriarch of the people.

I always liked the idea of the roses growing close by the Virgin.

The whole myth of Guadalupe, Juan Diego brings roses to the Bishop of Mexico and then supposedly roses wouldn't, Castilian roses don't grow in Mexico.

But he brought the bishop those roses to prove that he did see the Virgin Mary.

So basically, I really like myth.

I really like marrying myth into the garden.

That's why I like growing a lot of plants because there's a lot of symbolism behind a lot of them.

- And then the gate was actually his dad's gate.

Right?

Garden gate?

- Yeah, it is.

So my mom was, you know how mothers are.

They're always renovating homes and stuff.

So my mom got rid of the gate, and the gate has my dad's initials.

So I told her to save it for me so I can have it.

- I never thought that I would experience such beauty in my life and that we've been co-producers of it, you know?

It's really been just kind of co-creating with with nature.

It's just been so much fun.

- If you really want to express yourself artistically, I think gardening, there's so much depth in gardening, because there's smell, there's color, there's seasons.

So it's the most rewarding expression of oneself, if you ask me.

- Monarch butterflies leaving Mexico in spring are not the same ones that return in fall, or even the ones that we'll see in our gardens.

To chronicle the migration from Canada and back, Sara Dykman pumped the pedals on a cobbled together bicycle.

Her trek illustrates how gardeners in three countries connect as stewards to help endangered wildlife of all kinds.

- The goal of my butterfly bicycle trip was to be a voice for the monarch and to really tell people that they need our help.

The monarchs need us to share our yards with them.

And of course, halfway through my trip, I realized I had a lot to say and I had a lot of opinions, and often I was a little...

I was very angry.

I shouldn't say a little.

I was very angry at the state of the planet and how much we've stolen from the monarchs and how we just refuse to share.

So about halfway through, I said, I'm going to write a book.

My favorite part about the migration is that it's multigenerational.

So when I left Mexico in March of 2017, I was biking with literally thousands of monarchs.

Only for a few miles.

Turns out monarchs don't follow roads.

But I eventually would weave my way back and forth north, and I'd see a monarch or two, and I'd know that it was the end of their journey.

I knew that every single monarch I was starting with was going to die before I returned in November, and that's because it's a generational migration.

So all of those migrants were traveling north.

They were tattered, they were faded.

They looked like survivors, and they arrived to Texas and Oklahoma, where they hope people have planted enough milkweed in their yards, not mowed those roadside ditches too too early or too late, and they're going to lay their eggs on those milkweed and die.

It's those eggs that metamorphose into adult butterflies.

That's what we call the first generation of the season.

And in the end, it takes three to five generations to complete the whole loop.

So when I was in Indiana headed south, I remember seeing this common milkweed with a little egg on the leaf and thinking, maybe I met the great great grandma of this egg.

And then thinking, and this egg is going to fly to a forest they've never been, thousands and thousands of miles, and they're going to fly to a forest that their great great grandma was on.

They've never been there before.

I know personally, from experience, that's a very long way, and that's astounding.

I call them the most democratic of species, because they don't care if you're rich or poor.

They don't care how you vote, where you live.

If all you can do is go outside, they're going to grace you with their presence.

And everyone can help, which is not something we can do for a lot of animals.

Even a parking lot median, I've seen native plants growing and I've seen monarchs visiting.

One of my favorite things about the monarch is that they do, they connect us all, and they connect our efforts.

So often a person will be gardening in their yard and they'll have just a small little garden and it can feel a little hopeless, right?

Like, oh, how is this little garden contributing to this huge problem?

But I was able to bike between all these gardens and I was able to see, wow, that garden plus that garden plus that garden adds up.

And I've actually come to see the monarch as sort of a symbol for this idea that small is big, right?

So when you go to Mexico in the oyamel fir forest, you'll see millions of monarchs hanging from the branches, and one monarch might wiggle a needle of an oyamel fir tree, but when you get thousands together, it'll actually be enough collective weight that they can break a branch.

So if butterflies can come together and break a branch, then we can come together, share a little bit of our yards and metaphorically make change, bend those branches ourselves.

I will never forget being in, I think I was in... Where was I?

Nebraska.

And I was visiting a suburban school garden, and we were exploring this little pollinator garden that they'd created, and there was milkweed and there were some native nectar plants, and then a monarch flew over our heads, and it was like we'd won the Super Bowl.

We were so excited, and I love the fact that that monarch found that small school garden.

That monarch was there entirely because that teacher had put in the work.

She'd gifted those kids this connection to Mexico, this connection to Canada, this connection to conservation, in that she'd gifted these kids the knowledge that their action creates change.

On the course of my trip, I talked to about 9,000 people plus hundreds of interviews, hundreds of roadside, thousands of roadside encounters, but the book was to say, no, I want to reach lots and lots and lots of people, people that I'm not going to bike through their town, at least not this year.

The monarch is an ambassador to nature.

So when we're protecting the monarch, we're protecting the spiders, we're protecting the frogs, we're protecting the birds.

Now, one thing I've noticed is that some people think, oh, in order to protect the monarchs, we have to bring them inside and protect them from spiders and wasps and ants.

And I just always say, bring a few in so you can watch the metamorphosis, but acknowledge the fact that one of the gifts the monarch brings is lots and lots of eggs that are going to get eaten, and we need those eggs to feed our ants and our spiders so that they can feed our birds and be part of this food web.

And so I hope people can fall in love with the monarch and then fall in love with all of the animals that live there, and I call these our neighbors.

So I call the monarchs our butterfly neighbors, and we've got frog neighbors and skunk neighbors and bird neighbors.

We have to we have to remember that they are our neighbors and this was their home.

And it's okay to take a little, but it's not okay to take all and not share a single square foot with them.

So that's really where my message is.

My message is share.

Share your yards.

Share the parking lot.

Share the roadside ditches.

Share and see that space not as a wild space that's scary and uninviting, but see that space as full of life and full of potential and full of the animals that make this planet work, and then go meet them and discover they're beautiful.

My goal on my bike tour was to be a voice for the monarch, and so I gave the monarch my time and my energy and my voice, and they turned around and gave me friendships and lots of ice cream and lots of memories and fun stories.

And so right now, as my way of thanking the monarchs for all they've given me is I'm trying to start a research project in Mexico.

I did a preliminary study in 2020 because I looked around and I watched this behavior called streaming, where the monarchs will leave their roosts and they'll fly down the mountains, not to migrate, but likely to drink water and then they'll fly back during the day.

And so I thought, how can I study them?

And the way I decided was to work with women living around the colony where they can't go to town and get a job because they have to stay home, and I train them to count monarchs three times a day that stream by their house and I put up little weather loggers, and so I was able to do a preliminary study and learn, wow, my methodology works.

And so now I'm headed back to Michoacan to continue this research and to train more women.

I consider the monarchs my teachers and I think they taught me how to see the world from a new perspective, and they also taught me to see that this world often isn't built for monarchs, and the decision makers aren't often thinking about monarchs.

And I felt that viscerally.

I'm biking down highways and people are passing me 90 miles an hour a foot away, and they're not thinking about my humanity, much like when we mow a ditch, we're not thinking about the monarchs' humanity.

And so I was able to see and feel how the world is often not built for people that aren't the most powerful.

Of course, that being said, I'm a white woman.

So as much as I felt the danger of traveling, I still have to acknowledge that my trip was easier.

So I'm conscious of that when I'm biking and thinking, again, I'm not the strongest, the bravest, or any of that.

But I'm the person that can do this because of how the rules are written.

And I camped behind churches a lot.

I camped in the woods a lot.

Again, I have to acknowledge that maybe someone saw me and they didn't call the police because I'm a white woman.

And my vision and my hope is that we can start to see the world and share the world with monarchs, and we can share the world with cyclists, and we can also share the world with people that don't look like me, with people of color that might feel too scared, for good reason, to camp behind a church.

I think the monarchs helped me see that, and I think they continue to help me see that, and I think the more we can see and the more we can see the world through the perspective of different people and different animals and different plants, the healthier the world will be for everyone.

- You sure know that dense clay soil can be quite a challenge.

Designer Leah Churner shares hands on tips to get along and grow along.

- Working with clay soil, you can amend it, and you can do a lot if you keep adding compost.

But it's surprising how many of the native plants that we have really just do fine in the clay soil.

So for this rocky clay soil, we knew that it's very important to add organic matter to make that clay soil a little bit easier for the plants to grow, because we have, in a clay soil environment, there is not a lot of oxygen.

It's good that the clay soil can hold onto water.

But it is kind of a low oxygen environment because those clay particles are so tiny.

So what we wanted to do was bring in organic matter, which would feed all the little microorganisms and all the fungi and all the little earthworms and bacteria and everything, and just create some healthier soil biology.

And so we did that by adding a lot of compost.

And the first way we did that was through a sheet mulching.

We took a layer of decomposed leaves, a layer of compost that we brought in, some of their own kitchen compost, and then we put down a layer of cardboard over that, just old boxes, you know, whatever boxes we had laying around.

And on top of that, we put hardwood mulch.

And over time, when you sheet mulch, that sheet mulch will break down into a nice layer of topsoil, and it takes a while, but it usually will break down in six months to a year.

So that was the first thing we did to amend the soil.

Another thing we did was just adding compost whenever we were planting.

Put a little bit in the planting hole.

Not a lot.

Just a little bit.

But also top dress, so put the compost on top of the soil after planting a plant, just each time, just put a little layer of compost on top of the soil and that helps the plants and the microorganisms that are going to help the plants get the nutrients from all that organic material.

It doesn't change the structure of the soil.

When you add more organic material, that makes the soil have a little bit better tilth and makes it a better environment for growing the plants.

But there are some plants that are just never going to do well in clay soil.

So you need to accept those limitations.

And so certain things like blackfoot daisies, four-nerve daisies, rosemary, lavender, are just not going to do well in the ground here.

So if you want those, maybe put them in a pot.

- Now, let's check in with Daphne Richards.

- Hi, I'm Daphne Richards, and this is Auggie.

As we head into cooler weather, why should we plant perennials and trees now rather than waiting until spring?

Because they need as much time as possible to acclimate, before temps get hot again!

Summers everywhere are hot and getting hotter, so newly installed plants will fare much better if planted after the intense summer heat has passed.

Autumn-planted trees, shrubs, and perennials won't show much evidence of growth over their first few months, but that's because all their effort is going in below ground, in the root zone!

The more time they have to get ready for their first summer, the better off they'll be.

But if you're planting anything tropical or frost sensitive, fall isn't the best time.

Autumn-planted heat-loving plants might not withstand the cold at all, or they may be severely damaged by the cold, and have a hard time recovering.

In addition to being careful about planting times, you should also make sure that the plants you're buying are appropriate for your situation.

Be sure to check the plant's label for its mature size and its light, soil, and water requirements before you end up with a plant that won't do well in your yard, no matter the season.

It's easy to be confused by all of this, so remember that you can always reach out to your local county extension office to ask questions about specific plants or situations.

And here in Central Texas, our Native and Adapted Plant Guide is a great resource.

You can access it online, or pick it up for free in local nurseries.

We get a lot of questions about insect problems.

But most insects are beneficial to our gardens.

Here's how a wasp changed Misty's mind!

(funky dance music) (funky music continues) Robert Villarreal grows native plants for pollinators and birds.

His flame acanthus attracts many butterflies, along with bees and hummingbirds.

This perennial shrub blooms from summer to fall in just about any soil.

It wants all the sun it can get, but will also accept part shade, growing to about three feet tall and up to five feet wide.

It drops its leaves after a frost, so cut back in late winter or early spring to shape and encourage branching, or wait until new growth emerges in spring and simply prune back to just above the new growth.

And Carol Mata's bougainvillea is a beauty that bees, butterflies, and night moths all appreciate.

We'd love to hear from you!

Click on centraltexasgardener.org to send us your stories, pictures, and videos.

- Let's head back to Leah Churner for one of her favorite garden tools.

- When you are dealing with clay soil, especially if it is rocky clay soil, so soil that has both clay and rocks in it, you're not going to have a lot of luck dealing with a regular shovel.

You're going to want to use a pick.

So this is the tool I like to use for digging in rocky clay soil.

It's just a garden pick and it has one flat side that is for digging and one sharp side, pointy side, that is for breaking up rocks and prying rocks out of the soil.

So I'm going to show you how I dig a hole very easily with this pick.

First I'm just scraping the mulch away with the flat end.

(cheerful music) This breaks up the rocks, makes it much easier to dig.

For Backyard Basics, I'm Leah Churner.

- Find out more and watch online at centraltexasgardener.org.

Until next time, adopt the pace of nature.

Her secret is patience.

(cheerful music) (cheerful music continues) (cheerful music continues) - [Announcer] Central Texas Gardener is made possible by the generous support from Lisa and Desi Rhoden.

Thank you.

(cheerful music)