By Pam Peck

The hot, dry dog-days of summer have finally  settled in. While August is not a month to plant, it is a time to assess your garden and to plan your next garden moves once cooler fall days arrive! Plan gardening changes that will simplify maintenance and conserve water, providing more time to relax in your yard! For example:

• Reduce your lawn by expanding and widening existing beds or by adding new perennial beds.
• By the end of the summer, patches of scorched turf grass will clearly denote prime locations for new beds of sun-loving bunch grasses and drought tolerant perennials. If the area is in back, perhaps consider going a little wilder and experiment with creating a pocket prairie.
• Shady areas of bare dirt and/or thinning grass? Concede that the sunlight is now inadequate for turf grass and create a shade bed under those mature trees! Or perhaps you’d prefer a sitting area with a bench or a few chairs? Just clear the struggling vegetation (including roots) and cover it with mulch or install a permeable paving option.
• Take a critical look at your garden. Are there dead plants that haven’t survived the drought, that are not suited to now-shady areas, or that have simply aged out and are in decline? Are plants overgrown or hiding windows or other architectural features? Is there a clear path to entryways? Are there problematic plants (e.g. require too much maintenance or water, just aren’t thriving, or alternatively, are too aggressive)? Determine whether pruning, removal or replacement with drought tolerant and suitably-sized alternatives will correct the problem.
• Perhaps you wish to add a water conservation feature such as rain barrels or a rain garden. August is a great time to research and plan such features.
• Pick one doable project to execute this fall that is within your budget, ability and available time. Remember, a master plan can be staged over multiple seasons. Don’t try to do it all at once, especially if DIY.

Tips for Success:

Take measurements, then spend hot summer days inside committing your design to paper and researching the perfect plants that will thrive in your soil, light and moisture conditions in the planned location.

Unfortunately, despite our July rains, most of Bexar County is still in severe drought. (Bexar County, TX | U.S. Drought Monitor)  Fortunately, our featured NICE plants are proven drought tolerant winners! This fall, shop for these and other drought tolerant natives for sun or shade at our NICE nurseries, Pollinatives and The Nectar Bar.

When determining the spacing and number of plants needed, utilize the mature size of the plants. Be sure to mark your windows and their sill heights from the ground on your plan. For areas in front of the windows, install plants that will not exceed this height at maturity. This will reduce future pruning and maintenance needs.

Fire experts now recommend leaving about 5 feet of space between plants and the home exterior, and to avoid highly flammable plants near the house. (Bonus: The five-foot buffer will allow easy exterior maintenance without trampling your plants.) While most existing landscaping fails to meet these recommendations, consider trimming existing plants away from the house by several feet and well below eaves and removing highly flammable plants.

Generally, put shorter plants in the front and taller ones in the back of beds. If the bed is viewed from multiple sides, put taller plants in the middle with shorter plants on the outside. Also remember plants need to be placed well back from walkways and driveways to ensure mature plants do not grow into these areas and tree roots will not lift and break up the pavement.

Once you finalize your August plans, wait to plant until cooler daily highs prevail in September. Of course you may purchase plants before then, but keep them in a shaded area and monitor their watering needs carefully until planting day. When planting from pots, be sure to break up tight, hard rootballs a bit and spread the roots on a mound of dirt in the hole you dig, which should be wide and no deeper than the root ball. (If you don’t do this, the roots will never leave the pot shape and expand into the surrounding soil.)

Once planted, be sure to provide supplemental watering as needed during at least the first year after planting. Use a moisture meter to check the soil and accurately determine when supplemental water is needed. Soil may be dry on top but moist below! Conversely, light rain may wet the mulch, while the soil below is still dry. Moisture meters take the guess work out of watering and can be ordered on-line.

Before planting new or expanded beds, be sure to clear any turf grass roots. This is easy enough with St. Augustine, but Bermuda is hard to kill as it has both surface roots and underground rhizomes. As such, it may take up to a year to totally rid the area of it, especially if you aren’t willing to dig the underground roots or do repeat spraying of herbicide as it resprouts. If you plan to use a solarization method with plastic or sheet mulching with cardboard, summer is a good time to start. (A Google search will yield advice on these methods.) Be patient. Remember, eliminating Bermuda rhizomes before new plants are in place is well worth any wait to the following planting season! If your new Bermuda-free bed borders a grassy area, be sure to edge it with an edging sunk deep enough to keep out the adjoining Bermuda roots and rhizomes!

When selecting a mulch for new beds (outside the five-foot fire zone), I strongly discourage using rocks for several reasons. In the sun, the reflected heat will stress your plants. Rocks inevitably collect leaves, seeds and soil, so weeds will grow, even if weed cloth is beneath. Rocks will make it difficult if not impossible to easily weed the area. Weed cloth and liners impede water penetration and often lead to lifeless, sterile soil below – not exactly the conditions plant roots thrive in. Instead, mulch beds with leaves (which are plentiful in the fall and spring) and/or a wood mulch such as cedar. Either choice naturally protects and then replenishes the soil as it decomposes.

Need help with planning your master garden design? The San Antonio Chapter will offer NLCP Level 2 “Landscape Design with Native Plants” on October 11; registration opens August 1, 2025. Native Plant Society of Texas