Garden Spark returns for its 7th season on August 24, 2023, kicking off a series of in-person talks by three of Austin’s finest garden thinkers. … Read More The post Garden Spark begins Season 7 next month appeared first on Digging. July 05, 2023 Garden Spark returns for its 7th season on August 24th, kicking off a series of in-person talks by 3 of Austin’s finest garden thinkers. If you enjoy gardens, style, and knowing, these talks are for you! This season we’ll find out how to “end up being the bison” and produce a pocket meadow in our home landscape, why we should pick a hedge over a fence, and how to harness stone and waterwise plants to make an utterly distinct, Texas-tough crevice garden. Talks are held at BartIf weather requires) on Thursday evenings, on Springs Nursery’s outdoor class (or inside. Precise times are revealed when talks go on sale, about a month ahead of time. I hope you’ll mark your calendar for the following dates and make plans to join us. Tickets must be acquired beforehand, and talks tend to offer out rapidly, so don’t miss out. Register For Garden Spark’s e-mail list to be notified as soon as tickets go on sale. Just click this link and ask to be added. John Hart Asher August 24– John Hart Asher Pocket Prairies: Creating Biodiverse Landscapes While Saving the World Ecological restoration is no longer a nicety. It’s a requirement. We all like wildflowers in the wild, but shouldn’t we require to see those very same species surrounding our homes and throughout our cities? In this talk John Hart Asher shows how to create and set up a “pocket prairie” with a diverse mix of native yards and flowers. Pocket meadows reconnect us with nature, supply essential habitat for pollinators and other native types, and enhance the landscape’s ability to recover our world. By installing your own pocket prairie, you’ll find out pretty quickly that you’re also restoring a part of yourself. Speaker Bio John Hart Asher has over 13 years of experience creating and developing natural communities in city environments. At Blackland Collaborative, his eco-friendly restoration firm, John Hart deal with engineers, architects, landscape designers, and designers to integrate sustainable landscape designs, practices, and viewpoints into tasks. He also intends to improve the performance of green roofs in semi-arid, subtropical environments and has helped style and develop many native-prairie green roofing systems all over the state of Texas, consisting of for Austin’s Edgeland House, which was featured in Dwell and Texas Architect and won several awards. Current tasks include repair of a tallgrass meadow in an urban riparian corridor; green roof research and application; and water conservation, soil removal, and green facilities. John Hart holds a bachelor’s in history from the University of Mississippi and a master’s in landscape architecture from the University of Texas at Austin, which awarded him a President’s Outstanding Staff Award in April 2018. Because 2019 he’s also hosted the nationally syndicated PBS reveal Central Texas Gardener. You can wager he has a pocket meadow in his own lawn. Follow John Hart on Instagram. Shaney Clemmons. Picture: Cambria Harkey December 7– Shaney Clemmons Hedge Fun: How Hedges Beat Fences for Wildlife Habitat and a Healthier Ecosystem and Why You Need One Instead of investing your landscaping spending plan on a fence, learn why planting a hedge is the greener option — — in every sense. Biodiverse hedges supply shelter and food for metropolitan wildlife, create and link wildlife corridors, and lower invulnerable cover, developing a healthier environment and more comfortable climate while also mitigating stormwater overflow. Landscape architect Shaney Clemmons explains why her firm, Shademaker Studio, started the Hedge Pledge 3 years earlier and how planting hedges has actually improved her clients’ gardens. Learn why climate-resilient plant style is essential, how to increase plant variety in an existing garden, and which plants are carrying out best in Austin’s extreme temperature levels of recent years. Speaker Bio Shaney Clemmons is the principal and founder of Shademaker Studio, a little landscape architecture studio in East Austin. A certified landscape architect with over 25 years of experience, Shaney takes on projects ranging from single-family residential gardens to numerous miles of beautiful byways. Shaney spent her youth spelunking the lava flow caves of southern Idaho and working the fields of the household farm, baling and cutting alfalfa on the Camas Prairie. These early experiences formed how she invests her time as an adult, both expertly and personally, and have actually made her a passionate observer and advocate for the outdoors. Considering that transferring to Austin in 2013, Shaney has become an advocate for enhancing soil health, reducing impervious cover and stormwater runoff, and increasing biodiversity within our city gardens. Coleson Bruce January 18– Coleson Bruce Crevice Gardens: Finding Natural Resilience in Central Texas Crevice gardening is cutting edge and popular in dry, cool-summer climates like Colorado’s. But here in Texas, standard crevice garden ing with alpine plants is a nonstarter thanks to our heat and humidity. Get in Coleson Bruce’s Texas-style crevice garden!.?.!! Coleson created a Texas-tough crevice garden during the COVID lockdown, when he all of a sudden had time on his hands and a yard of thirsty St. Augustine to kill. In place of traditional alpine granite, he used regional Texas limestone to form the gardening crevices. Rather of alpine plants, he released dry-loving types discovered in Zones 7 and up. As soon as he got it planted, along came Snowpocalypse in 2021, followed by the hellish summer season of 2022. Learn what became of it all, as Coleson shares his experience in creating, building, and preserving a Texas crevice garden. Whether a crevice garden (or maybe a crevice container?) is in your future, find ingenious techniques and useful suggestions that may assist you open the natural resilience of Central Texas gardens. Speaker Bio Coleson’s garden has actually been described by Kenton J. Seth, author of The Crevice Garden, as “among the finest crevice gardens: I ‘d put it in top 10 earth-wide, maybe even top 5.” A lawyer by trade, Coleson’s background includes desert biology and sculpture, both of which played a role in his fascination with crevice gardening. What began as a small landscaping project during the COVID lockdown changed into an 8-month, all-encompassing passion job, from which he emerged narrowly expert in crevice gardening — — undoubtedly a relatively small field of competitors. His garden has actually been included in popular gardening blogs, photographed by globally understood garden photographer Claire Takacs, and will be included in a forthcoming book by Pam Penick. Coleson lives in Austin with his partner and 3 young kids. __________________________ How to Attend Subscribe to Garden Spark for first dibs on tickets! Simply click this link and ask to be added. Sponsor Thank-You Grateful thanks to Barton Springs Nursery for sponsoring Garden Spark, supplying use of their gorgeous place, and their hospitality! I welcome your remarks. Please scroll to the end of this post to leave one. If you’re reading in an email, click here to visit Digging and discover the comment box at the end of each post. And hey, did someone forward this email to you, and you want to subscribe? Click on this link to get Digging delivered directly to your inbox! All material © 2023 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unapproved recreation restricted. The post Garden Spark starts Season 7 next month appeared first on Digging.