2019 Garden Tour Promotes Discovery and Education

Birds and bees, water and trees: all precious gifts of nature that those of us living in the Texas Hill Country strive to preserve. And all are subjects of the educational opportunities you’ll discover during the Wimberley Garden Club’s 24th Annual Garden Tour on May 11.

Want to learn more about birds of all kinds? Jesse Huth, founder and CEO of Huth Avian, will be at one of the gardens to answer your questions. Huth began his career as a “chicken master” at age 10 peddling free-range chicken eggs around Wimberley and garnering serious attention with appearances on local TV. Over the years he started the Fancy Feathers 4H Club, at that time the only 4-H club in Texas devoted to exhibition/ backyard chickens, and he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in poultry science, welfare and behavior from Texas A&M University. Huth’s expertise in wild birds is equally vast, and he is a respected and active member of birding societies in America and internationally.

Did you know that the western honey bee is the official State Pollinator of Texas? The American Honeybee Protection Agency has been dedicated to bee rescue and relocation since 2012, providing wild bees to residential and commercial clients, pushing for ordinances and legislation that better protect the honeybee, and developing programs that integrate wild bees that pose no danger to the public into urban contexts. AHPA representative Jon Ray will be at one of the tour’s gardens to help you understand more about the keystone role of honeybees in our ecosystem and how you can help save people from bees and bees from people. APHA’s delicious array of local honeys will also be for sale.

If you’re ready to grow vegetables, herbs or flowers without bending or kneeling, hoisting heavy tools, weeding or worrying about too much or too little water, timers or evaporation, two Garden Club members whose gardens are on the tour want to show you their water-saving, raised-bed alternatives. Instead of using drip or soaker hoses, these DIY galvanized tank gardens allow plants to take root quickly and water themselves the way durable native plants and trees do: by wicking water up from a water reservoir below. The Garden Club has donated tanks outfitted with this system to Jacob’s Well Elementary, Wimberley High School and the Katherine Anne Porter School, which recently enlarged their garden to 13 tanks.

Steve Austin, a board-certified master arborist and local manager of Bartlett Tree Experts, is well-known to the Wimberley Community. He will be at a tour garden from 9am until 11:30am to answer questions and hand out free native tree seedlings. Austin and his team are specialists in Hill Country issues, and dedicated to developing environmentally sound practices and products. The Bartlett Legacy Tree Program provides tree seedlings to help with reforestation and restoration, and teaches people how to care for their trees.

Garden Tour tickets are $20 and are available now until May 6 at www.wimberleygardenclub.org (by credit card) and from May 6 to 11 at the Wimberley Visitor’s Center (cash or check only). Tour participants must pick up their tour maps and admittance wristbands at the Visitor’s Center on the day of the tour.