By Bill Ward
Published in The Boerne Star on June 18, 2002
Most of us interested in native plants share the idea that it is important to nurture native-plant populations so as to maintain or restore the natural ecological diversity. We know there are abundant scientific data showing that an ecologically diverse ecosystem is a healthy ecosystem.
Native-plant diversity is a fundamental element of a healthy system. Virtually all other living things directly or indirectly depend on plants.
In the Hill Country we are especially concerned about healthy and diverse vegetation because of its influence on our most precious natural resource – ground water. Generally, a watershed with good diverse vegetative cover has increased infiltration and decreased runoff. This does two things: keeps the water table up and keeps the frequency of flooding down.
Undoubtedly, poor management of native vegetation in many watersheds is leading to increasingly high cost of water. This pain in the pocketbook surely will cause some changes in our lifestyle at some time in the future. But for most of us this will be an expensive annoyance, not a matter of survival.
Some folks in northern Kendall County have an entirely different relationship with native plants. Their existence depends on native plants, and they manage their land accordingly.
The Robin Giles family, who operate Hillingdon Ranch east of Comfort, would be the “poster family” for the Society of Good Land Stewards, if there were such a society. This family has a very special relationship with native plants.
If you were told the Giles family raises Black Angus cattle, quality-mohair goats. and fine-wool sheep (yes, all three), you might picture a rocky, overgrazed terrain. Not at all. Their ranch supports a well-balanced diversity of native plants. Hillingdon Ranch, started by Robin Giles’ grandfather in the 1880s, does support cattle, goats, and sheep, but in no more numbers than can survive on the native vegetation.
There is no supplemental feeding of hay. It is survival of the fittest on that ranch. Some limited patches of exotic coastal Bermuda grass are grazed from time to time to give native grasses a chance to rejuvenate after droughts or other stresses.
For the most part, however, the livestock must depend on native grasses and forbs. To sustain their livelihood, the Giles family must strive to maintain a diversity of native plants on the ranch.
Giles, his wife Carol, and youngest son Grant have worked hard to gain their intimate insight into how a multitude of native grasses, forbs; and trees fit into a healthy Hill Country ecosystem.
Another good-land-steward practice which ensures viable populations of native forbs and trees on Robin Giles’s ranch is managing the doe:buck ratio to be as near to 1:1 as possible. Hunters allowed on the ranch are only those who are satisfied to shoot mostly does, because they share Giles’s concern about the destructive effects of the overpopulation of deer in the Hill Country.
And guess what? Hillingdon Ranch has no Ashe juniper problem. That’s good land stewardship!
As a 1999 National Geographic article on the Texas Hill Country said of Giles, “He is passionately attached to the ranch, using it with a full sense of its ability to produce, which he says can last forever if you treat the land right.”
