Native Grown Articles

By Bill Ward Published in The Boerne Star on March 5, 2004 The miniature shrub damianita is the Operation NICE! (Natives Instead of the Common Exotics!) plant for March. Damianita

By Bill Ward Published in The Boerne Star on February 27, 2004 By now, nearly everyone who lives in the Boerne area is aware of the substantial problem with water

By Bill Ward Published in The Boerne Star on February 6, 2004 Bill and Jan Neiman of Junction, Texas, were honored with the Fellows Award for special service at the

By Bill Ward Published in The Boerne Star on January 23, 2004 Operation NICE! (Natives Instead of the Common Exotics!) commonly selects a native plant of the month which might

By Bill Ward Published in The Boerne Star on January 13, 2004 When lawnmowers became widely available during the late 1800s, many people in the US started keeping manicured lawns

By Bill Ward Published in The Boerne Star on December 24, 2003 The Plant of the Month to begin our 2004 Operation NICE! (Natives Instead of the Common Exotics!) is

By Bill Ward Published in The Boerne Star on December 5, 2003 When the Boerne Chapter of the Native Plant Society of Texas initiated its Operation NICE! (Natives Instead of

By Bill Ward Published in The Boerne Star on November 7, 2003 At the Annual Symposium of the Native Plant Society of Texas (NPSOT) last month, the Boerne Chapter was

By Bill Ward Published in The Boerne Star on October 24, 2003 If I remember correctly, oak wilt moved down here from Wisconsin or thereabouts. In Wisconsin, however, the infected

By Bill Ward Published in The Boerne Star on September 26, 2003 When some folks first move to the Hill Country from more northerly latitudes, they are given to muttering

By Bill Ward Published in The Boerne Star on September 5, 2003 When protected from deer, several kinds of wildflowers just naturally sprout up in our backyard. Three falls ago

By Bill Ward Published in The Boerne Star on August 22, 2003 Operation NICE! (Natives Instead of the Common Exotics!) took a timeout during the hottest summer month, but fall

By Bill Ward Published in The Boerne Star on August 8, 2003 August in the Hill Country is not a time when thoughts naturally turn to gardening and landscaping. The

By Bill Ward Published in The Boerne Star on July 11, 2003 Now that I know a little bit about Hill Country vegetation, I find myself comparing our native plants

By Bill Ward Published in The Boerne Star on June 17, 2003 As Boerne continues its fast development, it is common to hear a resident lamenting about a favorite field

By Bill Ward Published in The Boerne Star on May 13, 2003 The Boerne Chapter of the Native Plant Society of Texas (NPSOT) is a diverse group of people of

By Bill Ward Published in The Boerne Star on April 29, 2003 In the last couple of weeks, I’ve visited a few limestone canyons in Kendall and adjacent counties, primarily

By Bill Ward Published in The Boerne Star on April 15, 2003 We were lucky to build our house in a subdivision where most of the native vegetation had not

By Bill Ward Published in The Boerne Star on April 1, 2003 When we were deciding on the Operation NICE! (Natives Instead of the Common Exotics!) plant for April, there

By Bill Ward Published in The Boerne Star on March 18, 2003 Perhaps the most intriguing genus of native plant I’ve learned about since joining the Native Plant Society of

By Bill Ward Published in The Boerne Star on March 11, 2003 President Eisenhower chose the name “Columbine” for his presidential plane when I was an undergraduate at “The University”

By Bill Ward Published in The Boerne Star on February 18, 2003 “Will the deer eat it?” That’s a question the local nursery people hear more and more as suburbs

By Bill Ward Published in The Boerne Star on February 4, 2003 Operation NICE! (Natives Instead of Common Exotics!) is recommending Texas redbud (Ceris canadensis var. texensis) for the February

By Bill Ward Published in The Boerne Star on January 21, 2003 An often-told tale in the Hill Country is the story of the rancher who removed cedar (Ashe juniper)

By Bill Ward Published in The Boerne Star on January 7, 2003 When my wife and I first hiked the trails in Friedrich Park several years ago, it was a

By Bill Ward Published in The Boerne Star on December 24, 2002 “Take Only Photos; Leave Only Footprints” is a familiar admonition at state and national parks and nature preserves.

By Bill Ward Published in The Boerne Star on December 10, 2002 My brother called me a hypocrite for publicly touting native plants while privately keeping a greenhouse full of

By Bill Ward Published in The Boerne Star on November 26, 2002 During her recent talk in Boerne, noted author and landscape designer Jill Nokes asked, “Why isn’t the Big-tooth

By Bill Ward Published in The Boerne Star on November 12, 2002 In some ways the wildflowers and other native vegetation we enjoy in the Boerne area today were predestined

By Bill Ward Published in The Boerne Star on October 29, 2002 “Deck the halls with boughs of possumhaw, tra la la.” Yes, possumhaw! This is the holly of the