- Howdy, I'm John Hart Asher.

This week on "Central Texas Gardener," rev up garden design ideas.

Pam Penick waltzes us across Texas with designs and stories from her latest book, "Gardens of Texas."

Sarah Nemec and Roice Nelson scrapped the lawnmower for outdoor living and wildlife habitat.

Daphne highlights your photos and from CTGs archives, Trisha Shirey and Ivy Lara plant garlic for spring harvest.

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

- [Announcer] Central Texas Gardeners 30th season is made possible by Lisa and Desi Rhoden, supporting a love of gardening and nature for all communities.

(bright music) - [Announcer] Wanna know what happens to your recycled plastic?

Since 2004, HEB has turned 58 million pounds of recycled plastic into things like composite decking and Field & Future by HEB trash bags.

You can learn more at OurTexasOurFuture.com.

(bright music) - Sarah Nemec and Roice Nelson scrapped the lawnmower for outdoor living and wildlife habitat.

(bright music) (birds chirping) - We knew I didn't want grass, we didn't want a lawn mow.

I had the idea to put all the limestone gravel, almost like some of the beer gardens around town, essentially making the yard an extension of the house, a hangout area, and it has definitely evolved.

The beds were more perimeter, very narrow, and over the last few years, they've expanded and expanded and expanded for more planting area.

And so now we've got specific places for different activities.

I'm Sarah Nemec, and we ended up here in 2014.

Actually, we moved into a little tiny bungalow and lived in that for five years.

We had to tear it down, unfortunately, because it was beyond repair.

It was just deferred maintenance disrepair.

So, we completed the new house in 2020, and that's when the yard and garden really took off.

- My name is Roice Nelson.

I'm Sarah's husband, and she's the queen bee, and I'm the worker bee.

(laughs) And it's just been really cool watching how much this backyard has changed over the last few years and what she's done with it.

And I love sitting back here too, and just enjoying the time out here is my favorite thing about it.

- The pergola area, initially we had a stock tank pool because, you know, it's nice to have an area to stay cool in the summer, but decided we didn't wanna keep up with the care of the stock tank pool, wanted an area that was still a place where we could gather.

And so, I came up with the pergola idea and employed Roice to help me execute it.

- Worker bee.

(laughs) - Yep, worker bee, and some neighbors and some friends.

It's really ended up being a lovely hangout spot.

The table bases came from a overstock yard sale from a local restaurant company.

And then, I found a stone remnant of a really exotic, striking piece of stone so that I'd have a gorgeous focal point.

The fence actually was a chain link for years and years.

We added the privacy fence a couple years ago, and I knew that I wanted to paint it black, because I knew that the plants would be very striking against the black, that they would pop off of the black and the fence would recede.

And I think that that's been effective, separating the pergola area from the fire pit area, so you really do have these separate moments was an intentional plan.

The bed between them used to be just a little strip, but we widened it.

The prickly pear was actually here when we bought the house, and now this year, it's huge, and it's just gonna keep growing.

- She's really, yeah, sculptured that.

She shaped it, surprisingly, yeah.

- Yeah, I didn't realize that this is something that you could do, and I can't remember how I figured it out or someone told me.

And so yeah, now I've just been snapping the limbs off, and then I have stuff to share with friends, which is really fun.

Well, I'll let you talk about the fire pit, because we've actually had the fire pit- - For 10 years, yeah.

- For 10 years.

- It was our ninth anniversary, which is 10 years ago, 'cause next year is our 20th.

It has nine sides, and the welder, the constructor that made it for us, he was enjoying the math aspect of this, and so he wanted to make the bottom part of it in the golden ratio to the top.

Well it turns out there's different mathematical ratios associated with each polygon, and there's a different one for a nonagon than there is for a pentagon.

So there is the analog of the golden ratio of this fire pit is the ratio of the bottom to the top, associated with a nonagon.

- And then the area around the fire pit, again, we started with smaller beds.

We actually were on a trip in Marfa, and we were in a fire pit yard at a bar that we were enjoying one evening, and were surrounded by plants.

And we both were like, "We wanna duplicate this feeling.

"We wanna feel like you're lost in the plants."

And so, it's been a journey adding more plants, bringing the beds in to the area and finding the right plants.

So, I still am working towards getting the height that I want, and it's getting there, but I've got a few more years on some of the plants that are in.

- I want to call that out too, because my phone the other day, you know, the "for you" photos showed up, and a photo from that inspiration spot in Marfa sitting around the fire pit showed up again.

And I was sitting out here and looking around, and I actually like what Sarah's ended up creating here even better than that inspiration stuff too as well.

So even though she always wants more, it's beautiful, and it's even already surpassed the inspiration that we saw in Marfa five years ago.

- The look is different, because it's definitely desert plants there.

I started out wanting a tropical paradise.

I like tropical trips.

I wanted to feel like I was in a tropical paradise at home.

There have been lessons learned about what will work and what won't, so that's an evolution trying to find things that will give that look and approximate a tropical paradise, but can handle our freezes and can handle our summers.

I wanted to put in plants that would be evergreen so that it's bright or something cheerful to look at in the winter.

But also, there's a lot of fun with color, and the color in the different blooms also helps contribute to that tropical feel.

- The bamboo has been really cool to watch, 'cause it was just four clumps, and they were little.

- Yeah, they were little.

- And I didn't have the vision.

Sarah had the vision.

So what it's turned into now kind of blows me away.

And it really did, after year three, it really took off this past year.

I wanted to talk about Sarah's mom too, because it's been cool.

So Sarah and I have been together for over 20 years and watching Sarah where, in the house she grew up in, when we first started dating, watching her mom garden there and now watching Sarah, just like next generation of it has been- - It's true.

- [Roice] really, really neat.

- I didn't identify as a gardener until the last few years, but she was definitely an example.

She was a teacher, and in the summers, she was off from work.

She would be out there in the yard before we even woke up, and that's where she would spend a lot of her days, so yeah, hi Paulette.

- Yeah, when we built the house, we, well, a lot of what we talked about and how we were gonna do it was with the cats in mind.

- We had a catio.

It was like a kit on the little house that was here before.

And then when we were designing and building this house, we figured that we could use the screen and porch for our use, and we do, we love it, we use it all the time.

But yeah, it's a catio also.

- We work hard so our cats can have a better life.

(Roice laughing) - I wanted to be able to see out to the yard, so I picked trees that were gonna have open structure that you can see through.

The Sweet Bubba is lovely, because it gives me beautiful flowers, and I love the way it smells.

And then the palo verde was the most recent addition to bring height to that side.

One of the other things that I considered was how could you stimulate all the senses in a space?

So sight is obvious, you've got the plants, but distinction in texture, color, I'm a sucker for anything variegated.

(bright music) And then for taste, we've got, well we've got edibles and then, of course, the herbs.

And sound, well, the birds go crazy, and I see the hummingbirds flit from the sage to the cannas.

It's really fun to watch what they do.

The plants have been an evolution, figuring out what works in the heat, what works in the cold and what doesn't, and it's gonna keep changing.

- Acclaimed blogger and author, Pam Penick, hit the road across the state's highways and byways to connect us all through the people who cultivate their passions.

She joins us today for a look at the stories and what inspired her latest book, "Gardens of Texas."

Pam, how are you doing today?

- I'm doing great.

Thanks for having me on the show.

- Yes, well thank you so much.

I'm excited to talk about this, but let's back up a little bit and start about how did you get into blogging and social media and your focused on your interest in gardening?

- It really started with Tom Spencer.

I was reading his blog, "Soul of the Garden," in the early 2000s and loved seeing what he was planting in his Austin Garden and the design decisions that he was making, and it really inspired me as a new gardener.

And I was reading a few other blogs and I just thought, I need to join this conversation.

And so I started my blog, "Digging," in 2006 to just start sharing about my garden, and it became a creative outlet.

- You've done two other books, "Lawn Gone!"

and "The Water-Saving Garden."

What did you want to focus on this time?

- Those books were how-tos for a problem that I saw people wrestling with during the drought of 2011, which was converting traditional water-thirsty lawns into waterwise gardens.

Even after all these years, I still wasn't seeing Texas Gardens well represented in gardening books and gardening magazines that I love to read.

And the second frustration was also a personal frustration, because I felt like I was struggling in my own garden with the weather patterns that we're now seeing, these extreme weather events from snowpocalypse to drought and heat and all the hard-won gardening knowledge that I felt like I had acquired, I was suddenly starting to question some of it.

Like I didn't know anymore for sure which plants would survive the winter or make it through the summer.

And I knew that other gardening friends that I talk with regularly were having these same struggles, and so I figured everybody across the state was having those same questions and find out what motivates them to keep going, why they're excited about gardening, what their gardening passion is.

And that's what came together for the book to finally give Texas the gardening representation in book form that I knew that we deserved.

- Excellent, and it's a big state, so there should be a lot of garden to talk about.

- Yeah, yeah, it was a journey across...

I mean, I drove 6,000 miles across the state to create the book.

- Wow, wow!

Why do you feel it's so important to talk about or to create this community or share this larger community of gardeners?

- Gardening is kind of a solitary act for most people, but we get so much inspiration from shows like "Central Texas Gardener" and from talking to other gardeners and learning what they're doing successfully and then sharing what we know with people.

There's inspiration and knowledge to be shared.

- Well, let's talk about your book "Gardens of Texas."

How did you go about selecting these gardens?

- There are so many great gardens, and there were so many generous gardeners willing to share them.

My goal was to have at least five gardens from across five broad regions of the state, so I did a lot of traveling to meet gardeners.

And I ended up with 27 gardens in the book, and I was kind of going from three criteria for looking for the gardens that I would ultimately select.

One was, you know, beauty and interest.

Secondly, I wanted to choose gardens that had a unique story to tell, either about how the garden began or how they were adapting to climate patterns, and something that would resonate with me, and that I thought would resonate with readers.

And then the third criteria was just I wanted to really represent the diversity that I was seeing across Texas, whether that was garden style or reasons that people got into gardening, because there are so many reasons that people get into gardening.

There's so many different styles of gardens, and I just wanted to do my best to represent that.

- And did you ever come into a garden that was deemed finished?

- Oh gosh, no.

(John laughing) I don't know if I would ever, (laughs) if anybody would ever claim that.

No, it's always like the beginning when you're gardening.

- Right, right.

- It's the beginning every single year.

- Well, let's talk about a few of these, and I wanna make sure all of these are verified "Central Texas Gardener" fans, correct?

- (laughs) Of course they are.

- Of course they are, okay.

I just wanna make sure.

That was really important.

So in Central Texas, you went to Ruthie Burrus' garden, - Right.

- What's that?

- Ruthie's garden, she's on the west side of town, and her garden is flowery and beautiful.

She's got a wildflower meadow in the front and then a more traditional perennial garden in the back.

She uses a lot of native plants.

But what really compelled me, aside from the beauty of her garden, was the story that she had to tell.

She moved here from Beaumont, and she described that as a gardening paradise of like warm winters and plenty of rain.

And then she moved to Austin, and she said it was like moving to a place with no soil and no water.

And she is passionate about gardening with the climate instead of fighting what she has here and trying to create where she used to live, she wants to have a garden that fits here.

And the reason why it all matters is because this is the world we're passing on to our kids and grandkids.

And I mean, that was the great story about her garden that I really loved.

- It's probably a common theme amongst gardeners too I would think.

- I think so, yeah.

- Well what about West Texas, Guy and Lisa Fielder?

- Yeah, they're in Alpine, and they hired designer, Michael Eason, to design a native plant garden for them, using Chihuahuan desert plants, because that's the region that they live in.

They were not gardeners when they hired him.

And they just said they had like a bunch of tumbleweeds and some goat head burrs in their garden beforehand.

And he created this really beautiful native-plant garden.

And they were so astonished to see all the life that came to their yard once this garden was there, I mean, not just the beauty of the plants, which they said they didn't even know these plants existed, but suddenly, they had dragonflies and birds and bees and just pollinators of all kinds.

They were just really moved by that, and they wanted to share that with their neighbors and make their garden almost like a public space in the town of Alpine, which I loved.

- Yeah, it's a beautiful town though.

I think a lot of people think it's sort of like very austere and dry and there's not much going on.

- [Pam] Yeah, it's not like that, yeah, yeah.

- Wonderful.

Well what about South Texas, Linda Peterson's?

- Linda Peterson's garden has been a favorite of mine for a long time.

She has this cluster of really big live oaks in the center of her garden, and she and her husband built their house made a courtyard wall around those live oaks.

And one of those live oaks kind of comes through the wall.

She's got a hole cut out, and so there's these...

The trees is the first thing that you notice, but then around those trees, she's built this kind of silvery sparkly garden of agaves and blue grama grass and Greg's Delia and other plants that are really waterwise.

It's a gravel garden with no irrigation built into the garden, so anything that she puts in, she hand waters, but it's a very waterwise garden.

- [John] What about North Texas, Michael McDowell's Garden?

- Michael McDowell, he's better known as Plano Prairie Garden.

- Oh yes.

- He's on Instagram.

I find him so inspiring.

He's got this garden that's a great example of what you can do on a pretty strict budget.

He started small with his plants.

He would go to native plant sales and plant small and then he would sow a lot of plants from seed to create the garden that he has today, which is a no-lawn, prairie garden in this pretty standard suburban Plano neighborhood, so it's really different.

And his garden just especially comes to life in the spring and the fall.

In the fall, the Liatris burst into bloom, and that's when we photographed it, when all the monarchs on their migration are drawn to those gay feathers.

It's just a really special garden.

- Yeah, it's absolutely beautiful.

And for our last one, East Texas, Mark McKinnon.

- Mark McKinnon is a landscape architect in Houston, and he lives in a pretty urban neighborhood on a small lot.

And he really shows what you can do, even with native plants in a small lot.

Like he wanted to create like a refuge from the city and make it more like a camp, he said.

And so he planted a lot of trees in his lot, and those are very mature, beautiful trees now.

And then he has under that shade-loving ground covers, a lot of natives and other adapted plants.

And he's just really pragmatic in his approach to plant what grows well, plant more of that and then be patient when some sort of extreme weather event comes along that maybe knocks your plants back, be patient and give 'em a chance to come back.

And he says if you plant the right plants, especially with native plants, he's found, they will come right back.

- Right, the photography here is absolutely beautiful.

It's Kenny Braun was your- - Kenny Braun.

- sojourned with you all across the state?

- He did.

He did.

- And really capture some just beautiful, beautiful images here.

- He sure did.

- And I know he used to work at PBS a long time ago, I'm told.

- So I heard.

Yeah, yeah, he was amazing.

- Last question for you before we gotta wrap it up.

So, this is our 30th year on "Central Texas Gardener."

We're really excited about it.

And over that time, we've covered a lot of design philosophies and strategies and desires.

What do you see as some of the big changes that have really come about?

- Yeah, I mean, 30 years is an awesome accomplishment, so congratulations to "Central Texas Gardener," and I mean, it's been an inspiration for me over the years for sure.

And I guess over that time period, because that's really how long I've been gardening too, I've seen an embrace of native plants and waterwise gardening.

I mean, people were on board with that in Texas early, but really, the droughts that we have, have really increased that interest.

- Well, Pam, thank you so much for coming in and speaking with us today.

- Thank you.

- Now, folks, we're gonna check in with Daphne Richards.

(bright music) - Spring Wildflower season actually starts in fall when we plant seeds.

From Van Zandt County, between Dallas and Tyler, Perry and Laurie Debord shared pictures of their white Texas Indian paintbrush.

For two springs, they've lucked into white ones among the usual bright orange-red flowers.

They wrote, "We're bluebonnet poor, "but love the thriving paintbrushes.

"We watch the show every weekend on KERA "and appreciate the expertise, knowledge, tips, "and guest advice on what works "so we can avoid repeating failures "and cooperate with nature."

And from Alaska, we heard from our friend, Ginger Hudson, who took her Central Texas landscape design career to Juno, where she's the manager of the Jensen-Olson Arboretum.

She has sent this photo of Monarda fistulosa being visited by a bee-mimicking fly.

This fragrant perennial bee balm goes pretty much around the nation and into Canada.

We can plant seeds from October through mid-November to attract all kinds of bees and other pollinators.

And here's Ginger's great shot of a bumblebee and a hover fly on a dahlia.

And in May, Linda Nelle spotted this honeybee on a cactus flower.

She wrote, "Thanks for being a part "of this beautiful planet."

Well thanks, Linda!

Viewers like you all around the world are contributing to that beauty one sustainable choice at a time.

Find out more and watch online at CentralTexasGardener.org.

- As we celebrate "Central Texas Gardener's" 30th season, take a look at this Backyard Basics from September, 2014.

Regular hosts, Tricia Shirey and Ivy Lara, show how to plant garlic in autumn.

(bright music) - Hi, I am Tricia Shirey, and joining me today on Backyard Basics is Ivy Lara from Dripping Springs Garlic Queens.

You and your partner, Jana Cora, started this business.

Tell me why you got into garlic.

- We really decided that garlic was something that nobody else was doing, and it was something that would do very, very well in the hill country.

It's deer resistant.

- Yay.

- [Ivy] Yes, drought tolerant, and it takes nine months, kind of covers the whole winter, and you're good.

- [Tricia] And who doesn't love good fresh garlic?

- [Ivy] Absolutely.

- [Tricia] Tell me when you plant your garlic.

- [Ivy] We plant our garlic in October, that way it's ready in June.

So you don't really getting into the hot, hot months that the garlic doesn't like so much.

- And how do you prepare your soil when you're going to be planting garlic?

- We prepare our soil about a month in advance, heavy compost, mix it in with our existing beds, and that way there's a good nitrogen push.

And with our garlic, what we're gonna do is we soak it in seaweed and water the night before after we've separated them.

- Okay.

- And then in the morning, you dump out your seaweed and water, put that in your compost pile to feed, and then, you just rinse it through with rubbing alcohol.

- And why do you do the rubbing alcohol?

- The rubbing alcohol is gonna take off any stain that the seaweed might've inundated the garlic with.

- [Tricia] Because you want nice white garlic.

- Absolutely, absolutely.

- Okay.

And the seaweed just helps push it along, gives the roots a nice kickstart to get growing.

I noticed you have a little homemade tool to help you with the planting.

Tell me about that.

- So this is just a dowel, and it's really just to help with depth and distance between just so that we can be fairly stationary.

So with this, it's a three-inch depth that you want to plant in.

And what you're gonna do is you're gonna just take it, and you're gonna make a three inch hole.

And then when you're done with that, you're gonna take your garlic, and you always want the root side down.

So you're gonna take that, and you're gonna pop it down there, and then you just lightly cover.

So you don't want it right at the surface, and you want to make sure that you're only planting one clove at a time.

- Right, and so with that, then you'd measure five inches over, make another hole, so that makes it really fast to plant a long row of garlic quickly.

- Absolutely.

- So what type of watering and fertilizing schedule do you use to grow great garlic.

- So, you would probably wanna water once a week, with soaker hoses, about two hours, unless there's been a good rain.

But you want a well-drained soil.

You don't want the garlic to stay wet.

And as far as fertilizing goes, you wanna prep your soil really well, high nitrogen to begin with, and then if towards the end of the season it starts looking bad, you can add molasses.

- How do you know when it's ready to harvest?

- Typically, you're gonna harvest in June, and we harvest harvested in May.

And you're gonna know that it's ready when you have yellow leaves.

The bottom leaves start yellowing, and you still have, hopefully, five to six green leaves that are viable.

- [Tricia] Okay, and what are the varieties that you prefer to use?

- We like Lorz, which is a hard neck artichoke, and also, the Turbans.

So here I have redneck Janice and also Shilla.

They have all performed very, very well.

- And where do you get your varieties?

- You can find them in local nurseries.

You can also find places online.

- Well thanks so much, Ivy, for joining me on the program.

- Oh, for sure.

- From Backyard Basics, I'm Tricia Shirey, thanks for watching.

(bright music) - Check out CentralTexasGardner.org for tips, resources, and to watch online.

Until next time, adopt the pace of nature.

Her secret is patience.

(bright music continues) - [Announcer] "Central Texas Gardener's" 30th season is made possible by Lisa and Desi Rhoden, supporting a love of gardening and nature for all communities.

(bright music) - [Announcer] Wanna know what happens to your recycled plastic?

Since 2004, HEB has turned 58 million pounds of recycled plastic into things like composite decking and Field & Future by HEB trash bags.

You can learn more at OurTexasOurFuture.com.

(bright flute music)