- Howdy, I'm John Hart Asher!

This week on "Central Texas Gardener," explore native plants for sun and shade.

In an HOA, Martin and Eileen Byhower designed lawn-free habitat gardens under their live oaks in deer country.

Matt Kolodzie from Friendly Natives Nursery in Fredericksburg picks drought-tough plants for Texas weather swings.

Daphne Richards answers your questions and Eric Knight and Stacy Coplin forage edible wild plants.

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

Central Texas Gardener is made possible by generous support from Lisa and Desi Rhoden.

and by Diane Land and Steve Adler.

(warm pleasant music) (warm pleasant music continues) - When you're new to Texas, picking the right plants adds to the challenge.

But when Eileen and Martin Byhower arrived in Sun City, he adapted his know-how for lawn-free gardens under live oaks in deer country.

- There's a lot to learn.

There's 5,000 species of native plants in Texas, and I wanted to find the equivalent ones that I knew about already that were valuable for wildlife from doing habitat restoration work in Southern California.

So I moved here from Southern California, where I was a science teacher and birding guide for about 30 odd years.

And we moved to Sun City, Texas, here in Central Texas, so I could be a kid in a candy store and start all over again with a whole new set of nature.

'Cause I was a naturalist in California and I was doing the habitat restoration, and I wanted to do similar things here.

I did a lot of courses with the Native Plant Society and, with other groups, and I jumped right in and learned the nature and then started my own wildlife business here where I'm planting native plant gardens.

One of the things that brought us here was this yard full of heritage oaks.

I mean, it's got its challenges because they create a lot of shade.

And the only part of our yard that was sunny is the front.

So I wanted to do sun, pollinators and birds in the front that's a little more acceptable to an HOA and then the backyard in my yard became sort of a laboratory for experimenting with the kinds of plants that would be both aesthetically pleasing but also support wildlife.

I wanted to create a lot of diversity.

There was very low diversity when we moved in, and now I've got about 150 different species of plants in my yard, blooming at different times of the year.

- I look at things now and I, "Think this is nirvana.

This is wonderful."

Yeah.

- Moving here was a challenge, especially in the front yard where people walk by and the community standards have rules that might affect what I can do.

So the very first thing was, I got a permit to get rid of all the turf.

I wanted to create levels.

Wildlife likes different levels and different variety, things blooming at different times of year, different colors of plants.

But I also wanted to create a lot of interest.

So creating different elevations, having a walkway, having rocks, having all these different features, mulch beds as well as some rock beds would make it interesting and appealing.

So my yard could be an example of what is possible working within the confines of an HOA.

The deer love to eat anything that is not deer resistant.

So learning what's deer resistant has been really important.

Also, learning how to protect plants from the deer is really important too.

One of the things is, is dealing with deer: we have been up until now restricted to four-foot fences, and the deer can easily go over that.

But one of the things you can do to keep deer out of your yard is to put yard art or plants up against the fence to kind of circle the perimeter because deer don't have depth perception.

Their eyes are on each side, and so they need to see a landing place or they won't jump over the fence.

Most of my yard is shade.

I have these huge heritage oaks, and with turf requirements, it's very difficult to keep turf alive in shade, especially where I live.

I'm in the drainage path and my yard sometimes becomes a river.

All the soil had even washed away.

And I was able to find a way to restore that into a little beautiful community with inland sea oats and frostweed and Turk's cap and tropical salvia and various sedges.

So just by planting in between the roots and giving things a start of the trees, I didn't have to bury the roots, which you don't want to do to an oak tree.

And so I didn't have to cut through a lot of the roots, you just plant in between.

And what happened was that area now, when soil and mulch and compost gets washed downstream, it hits that area that stops it so it's built up its own community.

And now it's full of wildlife and flowers and plants, and it's become something of beauty.

There are plants that attract bugs.

Frostweed is probably my favorite.

One of my absolute favorite plants.

It grows in full shade.

Deer don't eat it and I use it as an insectary as well.

It may be the most important plant for southbound monarch butterflies in fall.

I've never use pesticides in my yard.

All I need are the plants that first attract the bugs and then attract the things that eat the bugs.

So I've got lizards, I've got birds, I've got all kinds of things preying on insects in my yard.

It's all about balance.

When people start using pesticides, what they do is they kill off everything, all the food for the lizards and the birds and all the good insects like, you know, dragonflies and damselflies eat more mosquitoes than than any other critter.

To get wildlife into your yard, and most people want birds and things like that, you have to plant the right kinds of plants in the right kinds of densities and in the right combinations.

You have, in other words, diversity is what brings in wildlife, and density does too.

So it's really good to plant in clusters.

Birds need cover, they need nesting materials, they need shelter, they need places to hide, and they need food.

I feed the birds with my flowers and Turk's cap, coral honeysuckle, flame acanthus, things like that, they're fantastic for hummingbirds, so I plant those a lot.

I've got a lot of these yaupons in my yard.

and they in spring in early spring will be just swarming with bees.

And then along comes January, when the berries are full and they'll be swarming with cedar wax wings.

And I have a I've got videos of hundreds of cedar wax wings that I can see from looking out my window.

In my yard we've had 106 species of birds.

We have resident species, we have wintering species, we have migratory species and we have birds that are here breeding in the summer.

So in the summer we have things like summer tanagers sticking around.

In the winter we have the beautiful singing white throated sparrows.

I have a camera that I can see the birds that are at my bird feeders.

I can just watch it in real time, stream it to my television, and I can see what's going on in my yard if I don't want to actually sit out in my yard because it's too hot.

My yard becomes a river at times.

And what I've had to do is figure out ways besides planting things to catch sediment, other ways to to adapt and stabilize the yard.

In places where the water creates erosion and comes down really fast, I wanted to slow it down.

So I've planted things like buttonbush, elbow bush, bushy bluestem as sort of like rain gardens to sort of divert the flow.

But I still have areas where water comes down or the dogs, because we have two very active young poodles.

And so I have to find areas that have bare spots, and you're not supposed to have bare spots.

So what we're going to do is we're going to put in a paver pathway along there.

But also I have some sensitive areas where I have my bird feeders and I have some more sensitive plants, and I have to keep the dogs out.

So I've put in caging metal, metal edging, caging with with stakes.

I find a lot of people want is they want a visual barrier, especially if their houses are close to other houses.

And there are shrubs that you can use, if you have sun, that are really good, some that are evergreen, like the Texas green sage, there's different varieties of that.

And that's beautiful purple flowers.

If you want a gentle screen that's also really pretty, there's a lot of understory trees that you can use, ornamental understory trees.

And I have a row, for example, in my backyard that has Anacacho orchid, Texas persimmon, and those persimmons are delicious if you get to them before the critters do, anacua, possumhaw.

Possumhaw holly is great because it's got the red berries in the winter.

So I feel like if we want to keep the beauty and the diversity and the natural features that draw many people here, that drew me to this community, we're all going to have to participate.

We need to help wildlife.

We need to create a national park with our houses, a place where where wildlife can persist and live.

And the best way to do that is by planting natives or even non-natives that are adapted that also are beneficial for wildlife and that are noninvasive.

And we have to work and get people on to the community associations, on to the homeowner associations, into city councils, in city government.

People have to realize what's happening and change and adapt because we're not going to get more water and we're not going to miraculously get better conditions of weather and climate and our yards are going to have to become the places where wildlife persist.

- In Central Texas, the best time to plant trees is in the fall.

In fact, we celebrate Texas Arbor Day on November 1st.

So today Matt Kolodzie from Friendly Natives Nursery in Fredericksburg picks a few great options for sun or shade.

How you doing Matt?

- I'm doing great.

Thanks, John.

- Well you have brought a ton of great stuff here that we're gonna talk about.

But first, I want to back up a little bit.

Best time to plant is in the fall.

I've heard fall, winter.

What's the deal?

- Basically the plants in Central Texas will do better planted in the fall and winter because the roots have a chance to fill out and grow.

They'll continue to grow basically from October through March and that makes it less stressful on the plants come summer when we've got all the heat.

- Are there any things in terms of preparation that folks might think about too, if they're gonna be planting a tree?

Or should they just go and stick it in the ground?

- Well, you need to dig the hole appropriately.

And a lot of people make the mistake of trying to backfill their hole with really fine compost or amended soil.

And really the best thing you need to do is backfill a hole with the soil that's already there.

So the roots can get used to that before they hit the edge of the hole.

Dig your hole about twice as wide as the plant and definitely no deeper than the plant sits in its pot.

- I've also heard the term "dig an ugly hole."

- That's right.

The roots tend to hit the side of a hole and follow around in a circle.

So if you make the edges rough, it gives those roots a chance to bump up against a bit of dirt and turn the corner and get back out into the native soil.

- Okay, and so I guess if you do a really pretty hole so to speak, then it's not unlike putting it in a pot.

So we really want those roots to sort of spread out, right?

- That's right.

We call it the bathtub effect.

- Okay, bathtub.

Okay.

- It's like water up against the edge of a bathtub.

- So we'll start off with the first one with a Lacey oak.

- Mm-hmm.

Lacey oak is probably my favorite small tree.

And we're gonna be talking about mostly ornamental-sized trees today.

Lacey oak is a little bit larger than what we normally call a ornamental tree, but it really solves the problem for people with smaller urban yards.

So you can use it in place of a live oak and it'll fit on an urban lot much better than a live oak.

Which, you know, if you plant a live oak, it may be the width of two small garden homes.

They have beautiful leaf color, more of a blue, in fact, it's sometimes called blue oak.

And probably 30 to 40 feet tall and 30 feet wide.

- And then what about deer resistance?

- I would say the deers don't really browse the leaves, but they may rub on the bark and so you need to protect the trunk of a younger tree.

Once it matures and toughens up, you won't have a problem.

And if they reach, they may try to nibble on the few lowest leaves, but other than that, they're deer resistant.

- Okay, and it's good too to incorporate, 'cause a lot of people plant live oaks 'cause they're great trees.

But it's really nice to have some of that diversity with the Lacey oak.

- Biodiversity among your plant selection is really a way to go.

Plus the Lacey oaks are highly resistant to oak wilt.

- Well, what about the roughleaf dogwood?

- Roughleaf dogwood is a medium-sized ornamental tree.

Really acts like a large shrub.

It wants to kind of make a thicket in the wild.

I think in your home landscape, it's easy to trim out suckers for a few years if you need to, and then train it up as more just of a multi-trunked small tree.

Really good wildlife plant.

A lot, I think I've read a hundred species of songbirds feast on the berries, which are white, which has got a nice ornamental feature to it.

They also have beautiful white blooms in the spring and great fall color on the roughleaf dogwood.

It's kind of uncommon.

It's more of a maroon to purple shade.

- This is a really great shade species as well, right?

- Yes, this one will tolerate part shade to most shade, a good understory planting.

- Okay, and then moisture, this one maybe does a little bit better with extra moisture or?

- This one can handle extra moisture.

You see it a lot in riparian areas where it gets a little extra water once in a while.

But it can also handle a really dry site.

- So maybe kind of just water it in to get it going and then?

- Water it in to get it established.

And probably after a year or two seasons, two summers, you probably won't have to water it again.

- The next one, the chitalpa, what about that guy?

- So chitalpa, is one that is not technically a native, but it's a hybrid of two native plants: desert willow and southern catalpa.

- So the name Chilopsis linearis and catalpa were put together to call it chitalpa.

I like it because it is more predictable in its stature, in its form.

It makes a good replacement for straight desert willow, which tend to be wonky.

And some people don't like the wildness of the look of a desert willow.

This is gonna have almost the exact same flowers, but with a little bit bigger leaf and a really fully rounded form.

And great bee plant.

- Another one's fairly common but, and is definitely wildly available, the possumhaw.

- And it's basically a deciduous version of the more, maybe more familiar yaupon.

Its native range is actually bigger than that of yaupon.

It grows farther north so it can handle a little bit colder temperature, which isn't necessarily a problem in the Austin area.

But as you move up towards North Texas, yaupon may have a little dieback in the winter and possumhaw would recover nicely.

And the the berries are just fabulous, especially on a gray winter misty day.

Because the leaves drop and then you just have this explosion of red berries and by the time they're ripe cedar wax wings and mockingbirds come in and just devour.

- [John] Right, I was about to say, I've seen a lot of cedar wax wings on those guys.

- [Matt] Yeah.

It's a favorite of theirs.

- Okay.

The next one, Eve's necklace.

- Eve's necklace, John, is my favorite ornamental tree because of really year round interest.

In the spring it has beautiful slightly fragrant orchid-type flowers that hang down.

They're pendulous and they're a nice pink-and-ivory color.

Really good pollinator at that time.

Then in the summer it has a beautiful lustrous green canopy followed in the fall and winter by strings of black seed pods that are segmented to look like a necklace.

- [John] Beautiful.

- And then also good fall color, kind of a buttery yellow.

- One of my favorite, this next one we're talking about though is flameleaf sumac.

- Flameleaf sumac.

I don't think you can beat that one for fall color.

It's very reliable.

You know, even our shumard and Spanish oaks sometimes are give and take on their fall color.

Every fall and winter we have glorious orange-red flame-colored on the flameleaf sumac.

- [John] It's just a bee magnet when that thing flowers.

- And then those turn into reddish fruits later in the year and those are also devoured by birds.

- Right.

And another bee plant would be the kidneywood.

Talk about a drought tolerant plant.

- You see it on canyon edges.

It loves limestone-based dry, rocky soil.

If you're a beekeeper, it makes really good honey and it smells great.

- Yes, the flowers are, the leaves have a peculiar smell to me, but the flowers are, man.

- But the flowers are awesome.

- Oh wow.

Finally we've got goldenball leadtree.

- Goldenball leadtree, I think, just like all these should be more widely planted.

It has wonderful puff ball, bright yellow flowers on it in the spring and early summer.

And as it ages, the bark turns a cinnamon color.

It's very rough and scraggly.

Very pretty, interesting bark.

So even in the winter you have the structure of the tree, which is fairly open and wonderful bark to look at.

- Well, Matt, I want to thank you so much for coming by here and we could talk about these for days.

I mean, a lot of these, like you said, are just plants that aren't as represented as much and definitely need to be incorporated in our landscapes more often.

So I wanna thank you again and I wanna remind everybody too that November 1st is Arbor Day and also the third week of October is Native Plant Week of Texas.

Next, let's check in with Daphne Richards.

(bright music) - The past few years have really been hard on our trees.

To renew our canopy, fall's a great time to plant, which is why we celebrate Texas Arbor Day in November each year.

Anytime from October all the way through February is ideal to get trees and shrubs established, giving them time to focus on their roots before hot weather returns.

At St. Mary's cemetery in Hearne, Robert Gonzalez and John Zeig noticed that Ashe junipers, aka cedar trees, were dying.

So they contacted chainsaw artist Della Meredith who carved this lovely statue that's beloved by all who visit.

From Dripping Springs, Brooke Koppy asked about the little shoots growing on the main trunk of her live oak tree.

We suggested she contact a certified arborist, and that led her to Jessica Jones from Austin Tree Surgeons.

Here's what Jessica had to say: "The shoots are called epicormic sprouts, caused by stress.

The stress could be due to the recent years of extended drought, freezes, or both.

We can cut them back in cool weather, but it's best not to trim in summer when it's typically hot and dry."

Jessica also noted that these wounds don't need to be painted after cutting, since they're very small.

I also want to point out that live oaks form similar sprouts from their roots.

As with epicormic sprouting in the canopy, root sprouts may be due to stress.

If the tree's growing in your lawn, you may choose to simply mow over the sprouts, or you can prune them off at the base, close to the ground, perhaps even pulling up a piece of the root along with it.

As with canopy water sprouts, you don't have to worry about treating the cut surface to prohibit oak wilt, as these small wounds don't attract the sap-feeding Nitidulid beetle that vectors this terrible disease.

Trees are not the only plants who love the fall, you can also plant native perennials, but be sure to get them in the ground by mid-November, and mulch the area around them, for winter insulation.

Once established, native Turk's cap promises flowers from late spring to fall for hummingbirds and butterflies.

In Corpus Christi, Sandra and Juan Garcia's Turk's cap really took off this year to adorn their fence.

And in East Austin, Robert Villarreal dressed up his fence with native gaura and Brazilian rock rose to bring hummingbirds, bees, and butterflies up close in his small garden.

We'd love to hear from you!

Click on CentralTexasGardener.org to send us your questions, pictures, and videos!

- Next, let's go out to eat with our plants.

Foragers and environmental educators, Eric Knight and Stacy Coplin, pick a few to add to our menus.

(bright music) - I'm Eric Knight.

- And I'm Stacey Coplin.

And we're the co-owners of Local Leaf, a small business here in Austin, Texas where we wild harvest yaupon and make a yaupon matcha product.

We're also the authors of "Foraging Texas" and Eric is gonna be talking about some other wild edible foods that you can find in your garden this fall.

- Yeah, so I really love talking about invasive edible plants because I think it's more probably a little more ethical and sustainable to be eating plants that kind of grow up wildly in gardens and in waste areas than, you know, trying to go out in native habitat and harvesting things that our native animals are eating.

So we really like harvesting invasive plants before we get into native plants.

By the way, I wanted to mention when you're harvesting any kind of wild plant, especially invasives 'cause they often tend to grow in kind of marginal habitats, it's really good to, you know, just have some common sense in mind.

You don't wanna harvest this from the bottom of a ditch along I-35, say.

You want to, you know, make sure you're harvesting in a non-polluted area.

So if, you know, like if you know there's an area that's landscaped and is probably sprayed, you don't wanna harvest from there.

But if it's from your backyard, you know you don't spray any pesticides, you know that's a pretty good safe place to harvest.

So one of our favorites here is lamb's quarter.

It comes out in spring when it's got the new leaves and then it kind of, it's going to seed right now in fall in Austin.

And so you can see here it's got the seeds coming out.

The scientific genus name is Chenopodium and that's actually, you might recognize it if you look on the back of like your quinoa packet, it might say Chenopodium.

It's the same genus as quinoa that you might buy.

So you can eat the seeds, you can strip 'em off and you kind of have to break up the chaff to get to the black seeds.

But these are edible.

And then also what we normally though is the leaves, like especially in spring and summer, you can pick the leaves off.

- It also has a bit of a particular fragrance to it.

- Yeah, yeah.

It has a weird smell.

Some people might think it smells, I don't know- - Like feet, maybe.

- A little bit like feet.

- A little bit like feet.

- But it doesn't taste like feet.

- No.

- It tastes pretty good.

And that flavor doesn't really come through when you cook with it.

We've made, you know, dips like this, it's kind of like a spinach substitute.

We also probably most commonly, we just throw it into scrambled eggs.

You can eat it raw too.

It doesn't have the, you know, that flavor either.

It's just kind of spinachy.

There's other invasive plants that are really common in garden beds, especially kind of a little later into winter and early spring.

You've got henbit and chickweed, cleavers is semi invasive.

So those are really good ones to harvest as well.

And you can do all kinds of stuff with 'em.

Like Stacy mentioned, we've got recipes in our book.

- We've got this passionflower.

You can make a really nice tea with it.

And this is Turk's cap.

You can eat the red flowers.

They're super sweet.

We like to do fun things like put goat cheese inside of them.

And we also have these Mexican plums that are out right now this fall.

- You know, we really encourage people eating invasive plants kind of first as first choices and then you can, you know, eat native plants also.

But really kind of taking advantage of eating the invasive plants over native plants I think is really important because it gives our native plants a break.

Also, it's really important when you're planning on eating any wild plant to really know for sure you're identifying the right plant.

So, you know, best way to learn is to really practice.

Maybe go on a foraging walk with somebody knowledgeable or, you know, there are books like ours, and there's others, to really learn how to identify plants well.

You also want to be really sure you know about any really toxic plants that might be in your area.

So we have a whole section on that in our book as well.

- And we also host foraging walks through our company Local Leaf as well.

- For Backyard Basics, I'm Eric.

- And I'm Stacy.

Happy foraging.

- Want more from "Central Texas Gardener"?

Well, follow our producer Linda on Instagram for behind-the-scenes content and go to CentralTexasGardener.org to sign up for our weekly newsletter.

As always, adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience.

(bright music) (bright music continues) Central Texas Gardener is made possible by generous support from Lisa and Desi Rhoden.

and by Diane Land and Steve Adler.

(cheerful jaunty music)