Building a new house, or moving into one, can be daunting. Even more daunting: what do you do with that land around the new house, especially if you’re unfamiliar with what will grow in your new area.
Luckily, Kathy Saucier has experience with Texas native landscaping. This month she shares her experience of planning the landscape around her newly built Fredericksburg house. Her valuable insights will be helpful to new homeowners regardless of whether you’re moving into a newly built house on acreage or relandscaping a town lot home.
“I’ve never had the opportunity to start from scratch with a new landscape and began propagating natives in my personal nursery,” said Saucier. “At one point we had 1,300 pots of plants ready to put into the ground, but that all took planning, especially when we realized we also had to manage the way rainwater flowed on the property.”
Saucier shares the opportunities and challenges of working with a blank slate around your home at the June 24 meeting of the, Fredericksburg Chapter. She also shares how she explored which Texas natives would thrive and support the wildlife around the property.
“Many homeowners in our county are new to the Hill Country, and what grows at their previous home may not grow here,” said Jonathan Watt, president of NPSOT Fredericksburg. “New residents need to plan their new landscaping using Texas native plants and look at the soil where plants will go. Improving soils on a construction ‘moonscape will help with droughty conditions so plants will thrive.”
Saucier has been a NPSOT member since January 1992 and is a Fellows Member. Her first three decades were spent exploring natives in north Texas, but since she grew up in the Hill Country, she started using natives from this region as far back as the 1980s. Kathy is involved with and taught classes in NPSOT’s Native Landscaping Certification Program. She and her husband now reside on the 120-year-old Leyendecker family farm in southwestGillespie County.She has identified more than 220 Texas natives on their 40 acres and added another 70 native species to it as well. This diversity of native plants provides habitat for more than 70species of birds and 250 invertebrates (butterflies, moths, spiders, bees,beetles, etc.).
NPSOT Fredericksburg holds its monthly meetings on the 4th Tuesday of the month at St.Joseph’s Halle. There is a social time with snacks at 6:30 p.m. and the meeting starts at 7 p.m. The public is invited to attend in person or via online streaming (https://www.youtube.com/@fredericksburgtexasnativeg4884). More information is online at Facebook (@fbgtxnpsot), Instagram (@npsot_fredericksburg_chapter), and https://npsot.org/chapters/fredericksburg/. Meetings are free and open to the public.
