Water Talk: Encouraging Native Plants in HOA Landscapes
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 ก.ย. 2024
- Homeowner's Associations (HOAs) can be a challenge to work with and are often times seen as a high water user. During this Water Talk, a local leader shares tips on how to partner with your HOA to incorporate more native plants in your North Texas yard, and in the HOA common areas, with Texas state laws to reinforce your position.
Good talk! One thing I harp on a little too much is for folks to stop using the "wildscaping" idea as an excuse to just stick any native plants in the ground and then forget about doing any management. The reason people think of such things as "weedy" and "unkempt" is because they usually are -- folks plant lots of wildflowers without ever thinking about design and presentation.
I push hard for folks to adopt a more formal garden design where it's visible to the public. Not only does this show people that the landscape is being maintained, but it's proven to be tremendously fun as you create something really beautiful in that traditional garden style.... but use only native plants to do it.
For example, in my area we have Ilex vomitoria (Yaupon holly) that looks identical to boxwood, and it can be trimmed like boxwood. So why not make a formal border hedge along the sidewalk? You get privacy or a nice backdrop for your flowers at the same time the wildlife gets the benefit of the native plant. Plus, it's America's only caffeine-producing plant and makes a wonderful iced tea! Win Win Win.
You can have a yard filled with native plants, but that doesn't mean your yard has to look like an abandoned building site.
Traditional landscapes like those shown in the early slides are extremely boring!
I have common milkweed and canada goldenrod in front of my house.
Nobody died.
As far as I'm concerned it's a free country. You can't force your ' neat' looking narrative on me.