Online Chapter Meeting March 11: “Creating a Perennial Border with Native Plants” with Mary Irish

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[Updated 3/2/2021 with Zoom info. PD]

Join NPSOT-Wilco’s online chapter meeting on Thursday, March 11, 2021, at 7:00 pm, when author Mary Irish will present Creating a Perennial Border with Native Plants.

You must register in advance to attend the meeting.  See the instructions later in this post. 

At every meeting, we give away a book — about native plants or the meeting topic — to one randomly chosen meeting attendee!

Blackfoot Daisy, Melampodium leucanthum
Blackfoot Daisy, Melampodium leucanthum. Photo by Bob Kamper.

About the topic:  Perennial borders are a long used design feature, but few are devoted to native plants. In building a native plant border we learned valuable lessons in how this can be achieved and the great rewards it offers a gardener.

About our speaker:  Mary Irish is garden writer, lecturer and educator. She lived and worked in Arizona for 25 years. She is a native Texan who returned in 2012 and until her retirement in the spring of 2019 worked the San Antonio Botanical Garden managing the Garden’s plant sale program. She and her husband Gary live in Castroville, Texas – a historic town in the South Texas plains.

She is the author with Gary Irish of Agaves, Yuccas and Related Plants (Timber Press, 2000), Gardening in the Desert (University of Arizona Press, 2000), Arizona Gardener’s Guide (Cool Springs Press, 2003), Month by Month Gardening in the Desert Southwest (Cool Springs Press, 2003) with a revised edition entitled Gardening in the Desert of Arizona in 2008, Perennials for the Southwest, (Timber Press, 2006), Trees and Shrubs for the Southwest (Timber Press, 2008), A Place All Our Own (University of Arizona Press, 2012), Texas Getting Started Garden Guide (Cool Springs Press, 2013) and with Judith Phillips, Arizona-New Mexico Getting Started Garden Guide (Cool Springs Press, 2014) and Gardening on the Dry Side, Texas A&M Press.

Irish has worked as a consultant on projects for the Sunnyland Administrative Center, Sunnyland Center and Gardens in Rancho Mirage, California, Myriad Botanical Garden in Oklahoma City, downtown plantings for the City of Scottsdale, the Xeriscape Demonstration Garden in Glendale, Arizona, as well for numerous homeowner associations and private gardens.

Irish teaches classes regularly on the use and cultivation of agaves and succulents, woody plants, and low water use perennials. Her plant interests range widely with agaves and their relatives, bulbs and drought hardy perennials at the top of the list.

She served as the Director of Public Horticulture at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix for 11 years ending in 1999. She has served on the Board of the Arizona Nursery Association for 10 years, Native Seeds/SEARCH for 3 years and Boyce Thompson Arboretum for 9 years, 6 as the Chair.

She has a B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin and M.S. in Geography from Texas A&M University.

How to attend:   You must register in advance to attend the meeting.  Register at the link:  https://zoom.us/webinar/register/2116147254004/WN_5gjv_wHRS7SN3Mg7YpdWxw


NPSOT-Williamson County meetings are free and open to the public. In this time of public health risk, our in-person meetings and field trips are canceled until further notice.

Check our blog announcements, calendar and Facebook for developing plans for virtual meetings and virtual field trips.

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Online Chapter Meeting January 14: “Fifty Shades of Green Lite: Neat Natives for Your Landscape” with Ricky Linex

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[Updated 1/13/2021 with handout. Updated 1/2/2021 with additional info about the topic and speaker. Updated 12/28/2020 with Zoom instructions. PD]

Join NPSOT-Wilco’s online chapter meeting on Thursday, January 14, 2021,  at 7:00 pm, when guest speaker Ricky Linex will present Fifty Shades of Green Lite: Neat Natives for Your Landscape.

You can download Ricky’s handout from this link.

You must register in advance to attend the meeting.  See the info later in this post.

About our topic:   Fifty Shades of Green Lite: Neat Natives for Your Landscape showcases photos and descriptions of native plants that should be considered for your landscaping. Some of these are commercially available by seed and some will have to be hand collected responsibly from the wild. Some you may be familiar with and some are less common but still beautiful native wildflowers.

About our speaker:  Ricky recently retired from the Natural Resources Conservation Service where he served as a wildlife biologist for 52 North Central Texas counties. He worked 38+ years at several locations across the northern half of Texas. He is the author of Range Plants of North Central Texas, A Land User’s Guide to the Identification, Value and Management.

Register to attend:  You must register in advance to attend, using the link below. After registering, you’ll receive an email with instructions on how to join the meeting.

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NPSOT-Williamson County meetings are free and open to the public. In this time of public health risk, our in-person meetings and field trips are canceled until further notice.

Check our blog announcements, calendar and Facebook for developing plans for virtual meetings and virtual field trips.

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Give a tree a new home on Thursday, October 22!

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— by Beth Erwin

This Thursday, October 22, is our last of our three Fall NPSOT-Wilco Plant Sale days.  We will be on 8th Street in downtown Georgetown, across from the Georgetown Library and Red Poppy Café from 10-2, in the Georgetown Farmers Market.

Our first two sales were very successful, but I have to admit I am disappointed.  You see, it is the best time of the year to plant trees.  And we have a wonderful selection of healthy native trees, grown right here in Central Texas.  And nobody is buying them.  So we are going to put them on sale.  Trees in 3/5-gallon pots that were priced at $30 will be $22 Thursday.

Folks, we need to be planting native trees.  Now some of you will say, “I won’t live long enough to see it grown.”  Don’t worry about that!

Recent studies reveal that we have lost nearly 3 billion birds since 1970.  We planted two trees in our grandchildren’s backyard this past year.  Within 5 days, a pair of cardinals had built a nest in one and laid three eggs.  Birds need trees.  Insects and other critters need trees.  Humans need trees.  Trees take in the carbon dioxide we produce in abundance and give us back oxygen.  They reduce the greenhouse effect.  They clean pollutants out of the air.  Their roots help clean the water percolating through the soil as it works its way to our aquifers.  They act as sound baffles.  They hide us from the neighbors.  They give us shade from the merciless Texas sun.

Has oak wilt killed your live oak trees? Are you weary of ornamental pear trees that smell like a wet dog or worse when in flower, split apart in a strong wind, and ruin your landscape plants with leaves that never decay?  Tired of crepe myrtles that are virtually useless to wildlife?

Come see us Thursday or contact us at the link shown below.  All our plants are hard-working native Texas plants.  They are the plants you should have in your plot of ground, here in the heart of Texas.

  • Read details about the Oct 22 sale and see our plant list at this link.
  • Reach me (Beth Erwin) with any questions or requests using the contact form at this link.
  • See you at the sale!
  • Beth Erwin

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