After killing my south Texas lawn, I planted groups of Blackfoot daisy. It can make a lovely ground cover or mixed in with other Texas natives for a wild scape. It blooms constantly and survives our 110 degree summers and 15 degree winters.
Thank you for teaching people about "car slums," I think there are a lot of very unhappy people in this country, but they don't realize how much of it has to do with urban planning.
I’m in a DFW area suburb, and I agree with you completely. I just pulled out half of my front lawn which was bermudagrass and replaced it with native forbs and grasses, including many that you highlighted in this video. We also have limestone soil, but the limestone underlies an extremely heavy clay. I only finished last week, and I’ve already had people stopping by to tell me they like it! I think the problem is, developers just put in an easy blank slate, and people don’t know any different of how to change it to something better. (P.S. I HATE BERMUDAGRASS!)
dude im at my dads house in dfw area right now and he had a backyard full of blackland native grasses and the fuckin homeowners association called the cops on him! this place is literally insane.
Thank you REVEREND Tony for a great sermon and expose of the local plants in Austin. I do so look forward to Sunday mornings to see what you might bring us.
I can't believe it, Baldovino, where I walk my dog everyday. I have documented the last 5 years there. Lmk I can give you the before shots. One the largest Madrones you have ever seen, destroyed but I've got a picture! Yeah and the developers sprinkers are emptying Lake Travis.
You know, those grasses probably look unappealing to the normal person on that hillside…but if you see these in cultivation they all look stunning! The Muhlenbergia looks like it has pink mist rising above it when in flower and is amazing in mass plantings, the Schizachyrium starts blue in the spring, than is red in the fall and overwinter, and the seed heads on the bouteloua look like eyelashes that catch snow if you get any. They’re fairly regularly offered in cultivation(Schizachyrium scoparium actually has a lot of different cultivars even), and if you don’t wanna drive anywhere you can get them all from the online nursery ‘high country gardens’. They also carry the Callirhoe and melampodium, and some nolina and Scutellaria(just not the species shown here). If you like formal, English, or natural looking landscapes, you can make some amazing ones with just the plants shown in this video. You Don’t have to water once established, much better ecologically, and looks much better(at least in my opinion) than a lawn. Plant this stuff if you’re in the area, you won’t regret it!
Teaching natural history like you do helps people appreciate the local area; the problem is so few people get this education and never form roots or connection to place
All of the woods my friends & I played in when we were kids are all car slums and strip malls now. It causes me great heart ache whenever I see another plot of woods getting clear cut so we can look at more repulsive developments. *The industrial revolution and its consequences have been a disaster.*
Yes but that's not to say it had to be this way. The luddites weren't opposed to technology they were opposed to all the benefits of automation going straight to the top 1%.
Malvina Reynolds, who died in 1978, was a social activist and writer of protest songs. She wrote "Little Boxes" as a political statement about the uniformity, the sameness, which she believed was being fostered by what are now known as "cookie-cutter" or "tract" houses found along suburban streets with identical floor plans. Little Boxes Little boxes on the hillside Little boxes made of ticky-tacky Little boxes Little boxes Little boxes all the same There's a green one and a pink one And a blue one and a yellow one And they're all made out of ticky-tacky And they all look just the same And the people in the houses all go to the university And they all get put in boxes, little boxes all the same And there's doctors and there's lawyers And business executives And they're all made out of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same And they all play on the golf course and drink their martini dry And they all have pretty children and the children go to school And the children go to summer camp And then to the university And they all get put in boxes, and they all come out the same And the boys go into business and marry and raise a family And they all get put in boxes, little boxes all the same There's a green one, and a pink one And a blue one and a yellow one And they're all made out of ticky-tacky And they all look just the same
I know this neighborhood. I grew up in Austin and have built houses there my whole life. Not the track homes he was looking at on the other side of the road but the more expensive kind near him. Large scale builders destroy everything they touch and the homes they build are garbage in a record amount of time for homes being built new. I like to walk around the sites and look at the surrounding wildlife...it's great to see him in our neck of the woods.
I do pest control at houses like those. The native species that get wiped, both flora and fauna, out make way for all kinds of pests. Most quadrant homes and mcmansions are rat/termite/roach dumps
I'm a Horticulturist in Perth Western Australia, have just got a job with career opportunities I did my studies in Conservation and land management as well as horticulture. I now do lawns most of the day. I have had to put that side of my brain that's from you that says kill your lawn because atm that's how I'm making my money unfortunately, but I hope to build up a gardening side to the business and do soft landscaping. Planting plants specific to the swan coastal plain. But slowly and surely I can change the minds of people who I get work for to go for the more sustainable, better suited gardens for our specific soil. But for now unfortunately it's lawns :( been watching your channel for around 2021. You have opened my eyes to the bush and the wonderful landscape I'm blessed to be borne in.thankyou for being an inspiration and getting me interested in botany. You are a fucking legend of a cunt mate keep it up!
i grew up in Austin Texas. I always wondered why the fs we had to have unnaturally green grass in a desert. My family tried to have native grass but it got overtaken by the neighbor's really unpleasant succulent type grass that you'd usually see in suburbs these days.
Love watching your videos! Grew up in Texas. Built a house in Texas, cried when I had to tear up the land. Saved as much as possible...in the late 1990s. Lol builder thought I was nuts. Question: you question the suburban sprawl building methods & I agree. How can we or you restore harmony? Have you considered also funding your botany with books & classes & workshops geared to home landscape restoration to more native cultures/plantings? How to do it & how to make it look amazing. Thanks for all you do. If you ever wander into the new orleans area & want to go into the Delacroix marsh/wetlands, I got people here.
Unfortunately a lot of the solution to suburban sprawl is political. Silver lining is that in municipal politics just a few people can make an actual difference
I'm beating my head with same question. I cry every time I see community news that a new housing development is going up over park land. Partially, I know this is a bad ecological abuse, but I also cry because I feel so guilty-- the place I live now was just same several years ago!
Your videos are f*cking fantastic, thank you for churning these out and for free! Heavy stupid feelings on removing sustainable plants from the desert to replace with concrete/asphalt and extremely water reliant alternatives but it's happening all the time. I always hope I'll see a Las Vegas video and this is probably pretty close to the same outcome; too many golfcourses and too much "development" not enough preservation and sustainability. I just saw a plant at a popular park yesterday, wondered what it was..myrtle spurge😶 Thank you🙏🔥🙌
I wrote you a west TX version of November Requiem. The muse arrived on a Black Friday and kept me out of retail. BTW I ate my admission fee in persimmons at Enchanted Rock. “ Take me to the place Where the sediment is the clock Show me Swiss cheese karst Lead me to Enchanted Rock. Let’s find ammonites embedded in the Cretaceous interior seaway And behold the cactus flowers after rain comes this way. Bring me anyplace where I’ll never feel alone…They call the soil barren But the lichens call it home. When my life, no longer luminous, When I cannot bear any more Remind me peace and harmony aren’t sold in any store. Every molecule o’ mine has seen the sun before. . Show me truth and beauty, Open Up Earth’s verdient door🎶
This is the best shit ever. Love the “why you wanna do dat” refrain. I was born and raised in Austin and fled to the Midwest. Nice to see somebody digging the natural species in my hometown. Hope you get a chance to go south and walk around the green belt (particularly bauerle ranch area) before they inevitably bulldoze it. The wildflower center down there is another great spot. Hopefully it’s still there. Anyway, I subscribed and am looking forward to more. You’re a badass, my dude.
I take care of Los Angeles’s city parkland and have been doing it since 1989. If you only knew the true cost of what it takes to provide open green space for the millions who call LA home, maybe a little more thought would go into these ongoing travesties of modern times.
@@stephaniebaima6947 when you are in the inside of an organization and you raise your voice in way that is not the established voice, in other words if you voice words that they do not want to hear, you run the risk of being silenced.
Awesome video about native plants. Bought my house in Seguin just over a year ago and I've always wanted to xeriscape. This guy's got me hyped up about it now.
The Native Plant Society of Texas does plant rescues in the Austin area. You are perfectly suited to this. I don't see you changing development with almost half a million car loving people moving into Texas every year for the last several years. I do see you identifying plants, saving them by relocating them, and guilt-educating people on their importance.
Greetings....from the Western North Carolina Mountains....! I just love your enthusiasm !! Along with your awesomely crude sense of humor....I am seriously impressed with your "walking encyclopedia" mind. I find myself looking forward to the next video from your channel....especially the ones from across the pond. I had no idea just how wide and diverse the Blueberry Family is...!! I did a 'head count' of my wintertime inside plants a few days ago....and the total is 57 ....loving the plant world !!! " I can't take you to day care, so...." ( Love it !!! )
I live very near where you are, presumably. The place I live used to be meadow, allegedly. And, no, Joey, I don't wanna do none of that! But also, good luck finding a place to live in this desert pit where you can (1)park a truck...in a driveway that belongs to you and then (2) also trot down the road to a coffee shop without getting a snake bite or shot by Bubbah, please let me know. Anyway, thank you (for real) for coming up in here and ACTUALLY appreciating the rather hard to love natural landscape. Because no body here does it feels. And they don't listen either.
Yay! Great vid as always. I do excavation for places and some mini mansions in Beorne have me out there now excavating this exact habitat for nasty homes with ugly turf grass. So I’ve scraped 18yards of the topsoil off and trucked it home to spread around my house and neighborhood! It’s full of all these species in the video :-))))
Every time I go back to the Hill Country in Texas to visit my family I am astounded at the never-ending expansion. Where there once was rolling hills it's just subdivision after subdivision. It's nice to see the native plants I grew up with and used to play in as a kid.
Your videos are so fascinating and informative! You’re really making me want to go back to school for botany. Wish you had a someone filming you in more of your videos
Would you ever consider doing a series on how to propagate some of these native species? I live in a car slum nearby this video and would love to know how to propagate some plants and reclaim some of our yard. Wasting water on it is dumb. Thanks for all the great content!
I live in Austin and I love the semi-desert diversity. Thanks for knowing them and naming them. I've seen those something-something flowers growing out of a tuft of grass but I hadn't put two and two together and realized that was a parasitic (commensal, whatever) relationship. I grow native plants in pots in my porch and I've found a few that reseed every year under those conditions. I live by Lady Bird Lake and the shores of it are covered with Taro (Colocasia esculenta) which is an invasive species and impossible to eradicate. There are restaurants downtown that serve dishes with Taro and they probably import it from Indonesia, when they have an unlimited supply of it at hand. They'd have to dig it up. But... the problem is HOAs and the City of Austin itself. You can't replace your lawn with a landscape of these native plants without paying a fee to the City and getting a "Native Plant Certification." Then the City gives you a sign to stick in the ground. If you don't, you get a notice from the City that your lawn exceeds the height requirements and will attract rattlesnakes, rats, undesirable insects, ticks, etc. none of which is a problem except to bureaucrats and some of which is not true. Some people who were growing sunflowers (the commercial kind) were ticketed by the city a year or two ago, and of course they cut their sunflowers down because you can't fight that because the bureaucrats hadn't created a permit for that. Others have been cited for having a vegetable garden in front. And, most of these car slums have an HOA that has even stricter rules: you must have a lawn.
I will learn more about the native plants in my country,and put the seed in a public land😃...wonderfull Arbustos Xalapensis, Diospyros, so many different native plants, beautiful habitat, is sad when people don t care
I live in Bell County, about 45 min north of Austin and I am amazed how fast they are building each time I make the trip down there. It’s hell trying to keep grass alive down here (native Wisconsinite here) and I’ve been working trying to add more native landscape back to my yard.
Ayyyyyy, I live a few miles south of there. There's a big stand of jujube trees at Walnut Creek Park, not far from where you are in this vid, if you're interested. Edit: I looked up that subdivision and holy fuck it's wayyyyyyy further out than I thought. Those folks are gonna have dry municipal wells soon, on top of all the issues you point out. PS: heelers are the *best* ❤
My pos phone crashes if I upload too many apps so I can't watch on Patreon. I'm happy to watch after the release anyway but sad I can't get the "not for yt" content. I stay for not only the education but because you have a platform saying what I've been preaching all my adult life. Since being utterly blown away at finding acres of spring beauties as a kid running away from the shit at home to the woods, I've found serenity in nature. Bless you Joey, love ya man! Edit: we have a corner lot on a dirt road, still away from the sprawl 20 miles away. I've left all the native grass all winter & planted all the other natives I could get my hands on. It's less than an acre but the birds, bugs & other critters know it's safe here. Doing what I can to combat the destruction!
I worked as a landscaper in similar cookie cutter suburbs in Australia, same design same silly lawn grass. Credit were credits due the developers did have areas designated as revegetation sites. One I worked on used various tufting native grass species and ended up looking amazing. I made a comment to the landscape architect about why not use them in the wider design. He said he would have liked to but the developer and also the local council wanted green. Basically it was a council design mandate. Its a concept that going to have to be slapped out of them. After all why settle for just green when you can have red, purple, silver more at a fraction of the water and maintenance cost.
But I like my car! Yes, I have to admit, the public roads and hillsides could be done much better than they were there. Native plants, perhaps still a bit boosted by some of that re-claimed water (purple pipe) they were using there, if I saw that right. But, it is those houses. Just a grey uniformity there that is almost brutalist. Not much green or any colors, or any kind of contrast. Just depressing, because as stated, nothing else to see unless you travel out. Where I live at least, you can walk to a Mcdonalds, a mini strip mall, the Home Depot, and even to a Library (starting to be bicycle). It's somewhat more urban in comparison, and sadly, way more colorful than what that which was plopped onto the desert. I do not know about all the particulars mentioned, but it looked soulless and uninspiring. So much so I actually appreciate my otherwise run of the mill suburbia that has stayed out of the clutches of a Homeowner Association. What a nightmare.
As a life long professional /gardner/landscaper I hate the European traditional lawn&bed landscape. Design and plant using native species In a more natural way. In doing so you preserve the natural environment also creating habitat for flora and fana both. Man you helping in getting back into the botany side of things once again. I was an amateur botonist/mixologist but through the last 10 years forgot soooo much. Our native stuff here in Texas is beautiful and most people want to change and therefore destroy it.
Thank you one hundred times for the videos you make! As an amateur biologist, I spend a lot of my time IDing plants and animals around the Austin area. Do you utilize Inaturalist at all during your travels? I know a number of people in the community would be really happy to have documentation of what we are losing whenever these sprawling suburbs are made. What’s being built between Austin and Dripping Springs right now is a terrible mismanagement of land use.
next time you’re in Austin you should check out the Johnson creek trail, under the mopac highway, it’s right next to my old high school and I used to spend lots of times there while skipping useless classes, between the humid semi covered environment there and the flood control bringing all sorts of plants and seeds to the mouth of the river I think it’s gotta be at least interesting seeing how many different things have made their home there
looking at some of the music playlists, just want to make sure you're aware of Alfa Mist - a jazz group with some hip-hop crossover, kind of a cool jazz with samples vibe. Also if you made a yardening/de-lawning series or consulted on one I'd watch TF out of that, thought you were doing it but I can't find it anywhere. Also also if you're ever around Waco, check out Lacy Point - by the lake, thorn scrub habitat, not too many invasives (unlike Cameron Park, which is beautiful but half nandina and bamboo)
All the time I think about the big housing development full of McMansions they put up in our town. To do it, they cleared out one of the few remaining forested areas which held a self controlled population of coyotes. Once the woods got torn down the coyotes started running around eating everyone's cats and garbage and the population exploded all over the island. Meanwhile town council people are like "wHeRe dID THe CoYOtes COMe frOm?!?" The best part is that the development was finished in 2008, just in time for the big crash and like 90% just sat empty
One minute in and I can’t contain myself. I KNOW THAT FRICKIN TRAFFIC CIRCLE. And OMG has the development gotten so much worse since we moved back into town! All those beautiful TX Madrones are DOOMED! 😢 They were already dying as a result of the clearing/disturbance/development when we left four years ago. Folks at the Wildflower Center concurred when I was talking to them about it, but they have to keep up a cheerful demeanor for the public. SMH it just hurts to look at that 3:11 we have the biggest TX Persimmon I’ve ever seen in our yard. It must be 60+ years old, or maybe 100. The primary trunk is bigger than an adult man’s thigh. I love those trees 6:19 I know that exact tree 😭 9:53 the deer are so overpopulated out there the Yuccas have a hard time reproducing. Yucca flower is a favorite food of White-tailed deer, and they usually get eaten before they can even get pollinated. White as much habitat the animals are losing, it’s only going to get worse 10:30 😂 the biggest Baccharis neglecta I’ve ever seen is on a vacant lot next door 17:04 Nassella tenuissima Mexican Feathergrass, an extremely common Home Depot offering
If you ever decide to form coalition of botanist that could lobby each states government and federal government to grow native plants along the highways and byway, that would be fabulous. Be the Louis Rossman of native plant advocacy. I would donate to that cost.
Texas atleast is somewhat progressive about highways Lady Bird Johnson had a big impact on that wildflowers are planted along the highways. Not all states have the same though
The latest WTYP episode mentioned a pathogen affecting sassafras and spicebush radiating out from Pennsylvania. I really like spicebush. The ash bore devastated, oak wilt is devastating, fire blight is taking all the old fruit trees. It ain't looking good.
so pissed I missed you at festival beach, but I had an obligation to help a retirement home with their vegetable garden. Hopefully another opportunity comes around!
Arbutus Xalapensis is something I would love to learn to propagate. I want to put some around here but I believe I am out of their range being about 2 hours south of Austin
I just bought a house in southeast Austin and there’s two crepe myrtles in the backyard. My grandparents liked them so I guess they can stay but everything else is going native, at least a couple rain gardens going in eventually
Developers here name the areas after what they destroyed. I live at Spring Meadow on the Wasatch Front and when I was a kid it was like a very special oasis. Now the springs are gone (diverted) as are the maples, oaks, willows and wonderful wildflowers. Gad it's depressing! I started some more oaks and big tooth maples but won't live to see them even really make a show. Probably some future owner will tear them out...
Speaking of housing possibilities other than suburban cancer, when are you going to do a video of a visit to Forestiere Underground Gardens in Fresno, CA?
I’m near Canyon Lake. there is a green belt behind me and it’s thinning out because of the heat. I want to make if thicker so I can’t see my neighbors from my porch lol what do I plant that can handle being under taller trees??
![[Live] : ONE 168 วันนี้!! "โจนาธาน vs ซุปเปอร์เล็ก"](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/0jIN65KgJsI/mqdefault.jpg)
'don't fight where you live' man it's so fucking simple, but nobody seems to get it. society's broken. i appreciate you for always making sense
Annnnd the 1950's continue in a carcentric society. Sad.
After killing my south Texas lawn, I planted groups of Blackfoot daisy. It can make a lovely ground cover or mixed in with other Texas natives for a wild scape. It blooms constantly and survives our 110 degree summers and 15 degree winters.
#killYourLawn FTW
Yaaaaay duuuude golly gee thank you!
That's awesome! I'm hoping ai can get my in laws to let me do something similar to their lawn.
You can!
💚💚💚
Thank you for teaching people about "car slums," I think there are a lot of very unhappy people in this country, but they don't realize how much of it has to do with urban planning.
I’m in a DFW area suburb, and I agree with you completely. I just pulled out half of my front lawn which was bermudagrass and replaced it with native forbs and grasses, including many that you highlighted in this video. We also have limestone soil, but the limestone underlies an extremely heavy clay. I only finished last week, and I’ve already had people stopping by to tell me they like it! I think the problem is, developers just put in an easy blank slate, and people don’t know any different of how to change it to something better. (P.S. I HATE BERMUDAGRASS!)
dude im at my dads house in dfw area right now and he had a backyard full of blackland native grasses and the fuckin homeowners association called the cops on him! this place is literally insane.
Come to Houston and experience our endless concrete, oleander, feral cats, crape myrtle, apple snails, and nutria.
Thank you REVEREND Tony for a great sermon and expose of the local plants in Austin. I do so look forward to Sunday mornings to see what you might bring us.
I can't believe it, Baldovino, where I walk my dog everyday. I have documented the last 5 years there. Lmk I can give you the before shots. One the largest Madrones you have ever seen, destroyed but I've got a picture! Yeah and the developers sprinkers are emptying Lake Travis.
You know, those grasses probably look unappealing to the normal person on that hillside…but if you see these in cultivation they all look stunning! The Muhlenbergia looks like it has pink mist rising above it when in flower and is amazing in mass plantings, the Schizachyrium starts blue in the spring, than is red in the fall and overwinter, and the seed heads on the bouteloua look like eyelashes that catch snow if you get any. They’re fairly regularly offered in cultivation(Schizachyrium scoparium actually has a lot of different cultivars even), and if you don’t wanna drive anywhere you can get them all from the online nursery ‘high country gardens’. They also carry the Callirhoe and melampodium, and some nolina and Scutellaria(just not the species shown here). If you like formal, English, or natural looking landscapes, you can make some amazing ones with just the plants shown in this video. You Don’t have to water once established, much better ecologically, and looks much better(at least in my opinion) than a lawn. Plant this stuff if you’re in the area, you won’t regret it!
Teaching natural history like you do helps people appreciate the local area; the problem is so few people get this education and never form roots or connection to place
All of the woods my friends & I played in when we were kids are all car slums and strip malls now. It causes me great heart ache whenever I see another plot of woods getting clear cut so we can look at more repulsive developments.
*The industrial revolution and its consequences have been a disaster.*
Yes but that's not to say it had to be this way. The luddites weren't opposed to technology they were opposed to all the benefits of automation going straight to the top 1%.
Ted Kazinsky was right
@@franklubbock8400 I think Ted Kazinsky would have changed a lot more minds if they had started a podcast instead XD (lol but srsly)
Malvina Reynolds, who died in 1978, was a social activist and writer of protest songs. She wrote "Little Boxes" as a political statement about the uniformity, the sameness, which she believed was being fostered by what are now known as "cookie-cutter" or "tract" houses found along suburban streets with identical floor plans.
Little Boxes
Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky
Little boxes
Little boxes
Little boxes all the same
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same
And the people in the houses all go to the university
And they all get put in boxes, little boxes all the same
And there's doctors and there's lawyers
And business executives
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same
And they all play on the golf course and drink their martini dry
And they all have pretty children and the children go to school
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university
And they all get put in boxes, and they all come out the same
And the boys go into business and marry and raise a family
And they all get put in boxes, little boxes all the same
There's a green one, and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same
Was also thinking of this song!
Apparently she wrote this specifically about the Henry Doelger subdivisions in Daly City, CA.
I know this neighborhood. I grew up in Austin and have built houses there my whole life. Not the track homes he was looking at on the other side of the road but the more expensive kind near him. Large scale builders destroy everything they touch and the homes they build are garbage in a record amount of time for homes being built new. I like to walk around the sites and look at the surrounding wildlife...it's great to see him in our neck of the woods.
The McMansions???? No way problem 😊
I do pest control at houses like those. The native species that get wiped, both flora and fauna, out make way for all kinds of pests. Most quadrant homes and mcmansions are rat/termite/roach dumps
As a Chicago native living in Austin....this spoke to my heart. Thank you for the vid incredible as usual
I'm a Horticulturist in Perth Western Australia, have just got a job with career opportunities I did my studies in Conservation and land management as well as horticulture. I now do lawns most of the day. I have had to put that side of my brain that's from you that says kill your lawn because atm that's how I'm making my money unfortunately, but I hope to build up a gardening side to the business and do soft landscaping. Planting plants specific to the swan coastal plain. But slowly and surely I can change the minds of people who I get work for to go for the more sustainable, better suited gardens for our specific soil. But for now unfortunately it's lawns :( been watching your channel for around 2021. You have opened my eyes to the bush and the wonderful landscape I'm blessed to be borne in.thankyou for being an inspiration and getting me interested in botany. You are a fucking legend of a cunt mate keep it up!
I also have a hort degree and had to make money elsewhere to do the right thing.
i grew up in Austin Texas. I always wondered why the fs we had to have unnaturally green grass in a desert. My family tried to have native grass but it got overtaken by the neighbor's really unpleasant succulent type grass that you'd usually see in suburbs these days.
If it ever comes up again, use a mower on the lowest setting on the invasive grass. Especially during summer.
It’s not the desert lol, but it’s not a place where st Augustine or shit like that grows, true.
One of ur finest works yet. I was missing that existential dread that comes with being so disappointed in my fellow man
Love watching your videos! Grew up in Texas.
Built a house in Texas, cried when I had to tear up the land. Saved as much as possible...in the late 1990s. Lol builder thought I was nuts.
Question: you question the suburban sprawl building methods & I agree. How can we or you restore harmony? Have you considered also funding your botany with books & classes & workshops geared to home landscape restoration to more native cultures/plantings? How to do it & how to make it look amazing.
Thanks for all you do. If you ever wander into the new orleans area & want to go into the Delacroix marsh/wetlands, I got people here.
Unfortunately a lot of the solution to suburban sprawl is political. Silver lining is that in municipal politics just a few people can make an actual difference
I'm beating my head with same question. I cry every time I see community news that a new housing development is going up over park land. Partially, I know this is a bad ecological abuse, but I also cry because I feel so guilty-- the place I live now was just same several years ago!
Ban further development unless it’s vertical. It’s really not complicated. Grassroots environmental activism starts with you.
He was in my city, prowling around grooming young plants no doubt
😅
Doing some seedy shit
I live in north texas and the development is disgustingly rampant here too. Nothing but apartments, car washes, and strip malls being built
Your videos are f*cking fantastic, thank you for churning these out and for free! Heavy stupid feelings on removing sustainable plants from the desert to replace with concrete/asphalt and extremely water reliant alternatives but it's happening all the time. I always hope I'll see a Las Vegas video and this is probably pretty close to the same outcome; too many golfcourses and too much "development" not enough preservation and sustainability. I just saw a plant at a popular park yesterday, wondered what it was..myrtle spurge😶 Thank you🙏🔥🙌
Best tour guide there ever was
Yo appreciate tha medicine this fine Houston Tx morning. Keep going and Doin Dat !
I'll agree with you on keeping the native plants. Especially in this part of Texas where water is always an issue.
I wrote you a west TX version of November Requiem. The muse arrived on a Black Friday and kept me out of retail. BTW I ate my admission fee in persimmons at Enchanted Rock. “ Take me to the place Where the sediment is the clock Show me Swiss cheese karst Lead me to Enchanted Rock. Let’s find ammonites embedded in the Cretaceous interior seaway And behold the cactus flowers after rain comes this way. Bring me anyplace where I’ll never feel alone…They call the soil barren But the lichens call it home. When my life, no longer luminous, When I cannot bear any more Remind me peace and harmony aren’t sold in any store. Every molecule o’ mine has seen the sun before. . Show me truth and beauty, Open Up Earth’s verdient door🎶
This is the best shit ever. Love the “why you wanna do dat” refrain. I was born and raised in Austin and fled to the Midwest. Nice to see somebody digging the natural species in my hometown. Hope you get a chance to go south and walk around the green belt (particularly bauerle ranch area) before they inevitably bulldoze it. The wildflower center down there is another great spot. Hopefully it’s still there.
Anyway, I subscribed and am looking forward to more. You’re a badass, my dude.
Canned thankyou enough for this, never can understand destroying all that , saddens me so much thanks for speaking on this topic.
I take care of Los Angeles’s city parkland and have been doing it since 1989. If you only knew the true cost of what it takes to provide open green space for the millions who call LA home, maybe a little more thought would go into these ongoing travesties of modern times.
If you still do take care of the city's parkland, please raise your voice, they need to hear it 🙏
@@stephaniebaima6947 when you are in the inside of an organization and you raise your voice in way that is not the established voice, in other words if you voice words that they do not want to hear, you run the risk of being silenced.
Awesome video about native plants. Bought my house in Seguin just over a year ago and I've always wanted to xeriscape. This guy's got me hyped up about it now.
Erodium has hygroscopic awns, so it literally screws itself into the ground with repeated wet/dry cycles. It's fng' everywhere in the west!
Native Erodium texanum is cool though
Excellent episode! Please consider doing the same for (former) Blackland prairie zone east of I 35 in central Texas. 🙏
yes! im so curious on this...never thought about the DIVERSITY of LIFE that lives right beneath our noses, just looking at it. WOW.
Austin has so many different ecosystems!
The Native Plant Society of Texas does plant rescues in the Austin area. You are perfectly suited to this. I don't see you changing development with almost half a million car loving people moving into Texas every year for the last several years. I do see you identifying plants, saving them by relocating them, and guilt-educating people on their importance.
I love this channel. I come here for the "wax, bracts, and the facts" , "look at those bracts".
Greetings....from the Western North Carolina Mountains....! I just love your enthusiasm !! Along with your awesomely crude sense of humor....I am seriously impressed with your "walking encyclopedia" mind. I find myself looking forward to the next video from your channel....especially the ones from across the pond. I had no idea just how wide and diverse the Blueberry Family is...!! I did a 'head count' of my wintertime inside plants a few days ago....and the total is 57 ....loving the plant world !!! " I can't take you to day care, so...." ( Love it !!! )
I live very near where you are, presumably. The place I live used to be meadow, allegedly. And, no, Joey, I don't wanna do none of that! But also, good luck finding a place to live in this desert pit where you can (1)park a truck...in a driveway that belongs to you and then (2) also trot down the road to a coffee shop without getting a snake bite or shot by Bubbah, please let me know. Anyway, thank you (for real) for coming up in here and ACTUALLY appreciating the rather hard to love natural landscape. Because no body here does it feels. And they don't listen either.
Yay! Great vid as always. I do excavation for places and some mini mansions in Beorne have me out there now excavating this exact habitat for nasty homes with ugly turf grass. So I’ve scraped 18yards of the topsoil off and trucked it home to spread around my house and neighborhood! It’s full of all these species in the video :-))))
Crazy seeing you in what used to be my backyard. I remember when they first scalped the hills down F.M. 1431. It's just depressing.
Every time I go back to the Hill Country in Texas to visit my family I am astounded at the never-ending expansion. Where there once was rolling hills it's just subdivision after subdivision. It's nice to see the native plants I grew up with and used to play in as a kid.
Does my heart good to see/hear you are getting into the grasses!
Your videos are so fascinating and informative! You’re really making me want to go back to school for botany. Wish you had a someone filming you in more of your videos
Would you ever consider doing a series on how to propagate some of these native species? I live in a car slum nearby this video and would love to know how to propagate some plants and reclaim some of our yard. Wasting water on it is dumb. Thanks for all the great content!
Yes. In the meantime check out natives of Texas in Kerrville they sell Madrones I hear. So does Sul Ross University in Alpine
I live in Austin and I love the semi-desert diversity. Thanks for knowing them and naming them. I've seen those something-something flowers growing out of a tuft of grass but I hadn't put two and two together and realized that was a parasitic (commensal, whatever) relationship.
I grow native plants in pots in my porch and I've found a few that reseed every year under those conditions. I live by Lady Bird Lake and the shores of it are covered with Taro (Colocasia esculenta) which is an invasive species and impossible to eradicate. There are restaurants downtown that serve dishes with Taro and they probably import it from Indonesia, when they have an unlimited supply of it at hand. They'd have to dig it up.
But... the problem is HOAs and the City of Austin itself. You can't replace your lawn with a landscape of these native plants without paying a fee to the City and getting a "Native Plant Certification." Then the City gives you a sign to stick in the ground. If you don't, you get a notice from the City that your lawn exceeds the height requirements and will attract rattlesnakes, rats, undesirable insects, ticks, etc. none of which is a problem except to bureaucrats and some of which is not true. Some people who were growing sunflowers (the commercial kind) were ticketed by the city a year or two ago, and of course they cut their sunflowers down because you can't fight that because the bureaucrats hadn't created a permit for that. Others have been cited for having a vegetable garden in front.
And, most of these car slums have an HOA that has even stricter rules: you must have a lawn.
Going all in on the problems and ugliness of car centric urban planning really made my day
Great walk through of the native habitat … but depressing spalling housing estates and even more dim landscaping.
Wow you are a banger of a TH-camr. I feel smarter for having watched this.
Thanks 😊
Can't wait for you to come to south central Florida and see lake Wales ridge. Lots of preserve here in highlands.
I live couple hours north of Austin. I am new to plants I grow peppers and just started with succulents and importing them from Korea!
Love your work. 😍😍😍
Well here we are again...... Botany time!
I appreciate what you do!👍👍💯
I will learn more about the native plants in my country,and put the seed in a public land😃...wonderfull Arbustos Xalapensis, Diospyros, so many different native plants, beautiful habitat, is sad when people don t care
Damn buddy you're my favorite channel
I live in Bell County, about 45 min north of Austin and I am amazed how fast they are building each time I make the trip down there. It’s hell trying to keep grass alive down here (native Wisconsinite here) and I’ve been working trying to add more native landscape back to my yard.
Ayyyyyy, I live a few miles south of there. There's a big stand of jujube trees at Walnut Creek Park, not far from where you are in this vid, if you're interested.
Edit: I looked up that subdivision and holy fuck it's wayyyyyyy further out than I thought. Those folks are gonna have dry municipal wells soon, on top of all the issues you point out.
PS: heelers are the *best* ❤
The long curved road off the hill is directly mimicked on the SW end of Crosbie off Cooper Point Rd in Olympia/Tumwater WA!
My two favourite things, plants and bashing bad urban planning!
My pos phone crashes if I upload too many apps so I can't watch on Patreon. I'm happy to watch after the release anyway but sad I can't get the "not for yt" content. I stay for not only the education but because you have a platform saying what I've been preaching all my adult life. Since being utterly blown away at finding acres of spring beauties as a kid running away from the shit at home to the woods, I've found serenity in nature. Bless you Joey, love ya man!
Edit: we have a corner lot on a dirt road, still away from the sprawl 20 miles away. I've left all the native grass all winter & planted all the other natives I could get my hands on. It's less than an acre but the birds, bugs & other critters know it's safe here. Doing what I can to combat the destruction!
Good Video sent here from Mr. Rogers
I worked as a landscaper in similar cookie cutter suburbs in Australia, same design same silly lawn grass. Credit were credits due the developers did have areas designated as revegetation sites. One I worked on used various tufting native grass species and ended up looking amazing. I made a comment to the landscape architect about why not use them in the wider design. He said he would have liked to but the developer and also the local council wanted green. Basically it was a council design mandate. Its a concept that going to have to be slapped out of them. After all why settle for just green when you can have red, purple, silver more at a fraction of the water and maintenance cost.
But I like my car!
Yes, I have to admit, the public roads and hillsides could be done much better than they were there. Native plants, perhaps still a bit boosted by some of that re-claimed water (purple pipe) they were using there, if I saw that right.
But, it is those houses. Just a grey uniformity there that is almost brutalist. Not much green or any colors, or any kind of contrast. Just depressing, because as stated, nothing else to see unless you travel out. Where I live at least, you can walk to a Mcdonalds, a mini strip mall, the Home Depot, and even to a Library (starting to be bicycle). It's somewhat more urban in comparison, and sadly, way more colorful than what that which was plopped onto the desert. I do not know about all the particulars mentioned, but it looked soulless and uninspiring. So much so I actually appreciate my otherwise run of the mill suburbia that has stayed out of the clutches of a Homeowner Association.
What a nightmare.
As a life long professional /gardner/landscaper I hate the European traditional lawn&bed landscape. Design and plant using native species In a more natural way. In doing so you preserve the natural environment also creating habitat for flora and fana both. Man you helping in getting back into the botany side of things once again. I was an amateur botonist/mixologist but through the last 10 years forgot soooo much. Our native stuff here in Texas is beautiful and most people want to change and therefore destroy it.
"Kids wanna play in spiny shit."
Absolutely. There are things to see and do in an undeveloped landscape.
Thank you one hundred times for the videos you make!
As an amateur biologist, I spend a lot of my time IDing plants and animals around the Austin area.
Do you utilize Inaturalist at all during your travels? I know a number of people in the community would be really happy to have documentation of what we are losing whenever these sprawling suburbs are made.
What’s being built between Austin and Dripping Springs right now is a terrible mismanagement of land use.
Preaching it, brother!
Arbutus menziesii flower buds are starting to swell up here in Washington. Beautiful trees
One thing other than moths, humming birds, insects in general are native lizards looking for moisture.
Well done!
😊
thanks for the vid bro
Fantastic video
Support Native nurseries.
Eco revolution!! Thanks Tony!! My Illinois natives are going like gangbusters.
I love this video.
6:11 what an awesome tree
I love you and thank you
next time you’re in Austin you should check out the Johnson creek trail, under the mopac highway, it’s right next to my old high school and I used to spend lots of times there while skipping useless classes, between the humid semi covered environment there and the flood control bringing all sorts of plants and seeds to the mouth of the river I think it’s gotta be at least interesting seeing how many different things have made their home there
Yes, or Shoal Creek. I saw that wikipedia needed an article about Shoal Creek so I wrote it.
Ticky-tacky little boxes ALL in a row! When will we learn about water as in, we have none to waste! thank you stay safe.
"Little boxes on the hillside"🎶
what you say tony joe....what you said...thank you
ahem. do we appreciate enough that our guy is a genius botanist?
looking at some of the music playlists, just want to make sure you're aware of Alfa Mist - a jazz group with some hip-hop crossover, kind of a cool jazz with samples vibe. Also if you made a yardening/de-lawning series or consulted on one I'd watch TF out of that, thought you were doing it but I can't find it anywhere. Also also if you're ever around Waco, check out Lacy Point - by the lake, thorn scrub habitat, not too many invasives (unlike Cameron Park, which is beautiful but half nandina and bamboo)
All the time I think about the big housing development full of McMansions they put up in our town. To do it, they cleared out one of the few remaining forested areas which held a self controlled population of coyotes. Once the woods got torn down the coyotes started running around eating everyone's cats and garbage and the population exploded all over the island. Meanwhile town council people are like "wHeRe dID THe CoYOtes COMe frOm?!?" The best part is that the development was finished in 2008, just in time for the big crash and like 90% just sat empty
One minute in and I can’t contain myself. I KNOW THAT FRICKIN TRAFFIC CIRCLE. And OMG has the development gotten so much worse since we moved back into town! All those beautiful TX Madrones are DOOMED! 😢 They were already dying as a result of the clearing/disturbance/development when we left four years ago. Folks at the Wildflower Center concurred when I was talking to them about it, but they have to keep up a cheerful demeanor for the public. SMH it just hurts to look at that
3:11 we have the biggest TX Persimmon I’ve ever seen in our yard. It must be 60+ years old, or maybe 100. The primary trunk is bigger than an adult man’s thigh. I love those trees
6:19 I know that exact tree 😭
9:53 the deer are so overpopulated out there the Yuccas have a hard time reproducing. Yucca flower is a favorite food of White-tailed deer, and they usually get eaten before they can even get pollinated. White as much habitat the animals are losing, it’s only going to get worse
10:30 😂 the biggest Baccharis neglecta I’ve ever seen is on a vacant lot next door
17:04 Nassella tenuissima Mexican Feathergrass, an extremely common Home Depot offering
22:10 they call Chamaecyparis lawsonia a "incence cedar" too
Man can I relate to this perspective on what humans are doing to the landscape...
Plants are just really slow animals, they deserve rights 👍
Also I love these videos very funny and entertaining!
I like "car slum" but it's almost not harsh enough. At least slums have culture
If you ever decide to form coalition of botanist that could lobby each states government and federal government to grow native plants along the highways and byway, that would be fabulous. Be the Louis Rossman of native plant advocacy. I would donate to that cost.
Texas atleast is somewhat progressive about highways Lady Bird Johnson had a big impact on that wildflowers are planted along the highways. Not all states have the same though
The latest WTYP episode mentioned a pathogen affecting sassafras and spicebush radiating out from Pennsylvania. I really like spicebush. The ash bore devastated, oak wilt is devastating, fire blight is taking all the old fruit trees. It ain't looking good.
so pissed I missed you at festival beach, but I had an obligation to help a retirement home with their vegetable garden. Hopefully another opportunity comes around!
Arbutus Xalapensis is something I would love to learn to propagate. I want to put some around here but I believe I am out of their range being about 2 hours south of Austin
They are extremely hard to propagate and grow in captivity.
I just bought a house in southeast Austin and there’s two crepe myrtles in the backyard.
My grandparents liked them so I guess they can stay but everything else is going native, at least a couple rain gardens going in eventually
I live in Austin and ride my bike everywhere 😎
Spend your whole life in a Car! good one Tony
I’m so sad that Austin is completely different now. I lived there 13 years ago and I loved it, then right before I left it started going downhill.
Developers here name the areas after what they destroyed. I live at Spring Meadow on the Wasatch Front and when I was a kid it was like a very special oasis. Now the springs are gone (diverted) as are the maples, oaks, willows and wonderful wildflowers. Gad it's depressing! I started some more oaks and big tooth maples but won't live to see them even really make a show. Probably some future owner will tear them out...
Speaking of housing possibilities other than suburban cancer, when are you going to do a video of a visit to Forestiere Underground Gardens in Fresno, CA?
19:33 one of two common named Winecups
Great episode. Gfy.
I’m near Canyon Lake. there is a green belt behind me and it’s thinning out because of the heat. I want to make if thicker so I can’t see my neighbors from my porch lol what do I plant that can handle being under taller trees??