Mahler and his team have spent the last eight years
building up the collection of plants, species by species.
Typically when he is adding to the collection, Mahler
digs up four or five plants from a ranch. Two or three are
planted immediately in the garden. Then to hedge his
bets, he typically takes one or two home to his nursery to
try later in the garden.
“We’ve had pretty good luck keeping them alive; we’ve
gotten more to grow than we lost, but some take two or
three turns,” he admits.
Their most recent project is focused on building a
collection of South Texas woody and succulent species of
which there are 342 possibilities on their master list. They
now have 150 of those species growing well in the garden,
labeled with unique ceramic tiles, and mapped in a newly
published guide for this garden. There are another 50
woody and succulent species in the ground and as soon as
the success of those plants seems likely, each will be given
a sign and added to the map.
The plant diversity has made this unique garden a
terrific place to bird watch. It’s also a wonderful place
for butterflies and dragonflies. In fact, Tom Langschied,
CKWRI South Texas Wintering Birds Program
Coordinator, has identified some dragonfly species in the
garden that have never been seen north of the Rio Grande
Valley.
While the garden is largely about the plants, a replica of
an old fashioned windmill and water trough is the garden’s
centerpiece. The idea for a water feature came after
Bryant saw a replica of a hill country stream at the Lady
Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. After finding out that
it was the well-known naturalist David Mahler who had
developed it, he sought him out to build a similar kind of
water feature for the South Texas garden.
“He’s a botanist and a landscape designer, but he’s more an
artist than anything,” Bryant says of Mahler.
The idea of having some kind of stream appealed to
Bryant as did the sound of running water.
“Hmmm. Is there really such a thing as a running stream
in South Texas,” Mahler queried?
Moreover to have even a small waterfall one needed some
elevation and rock, and as Mahler discovered there’s not
a lot of rock in South Texas nor was there much elevation
change in the garden. Nonetheless, like the planner and
the designer that he is, Mahler and Bryant went on an
exploration trip, of sorts, to the famed King Ranch. What
they discovered were these dry streambeds that had
sacahuista grass growing down to the edge. When they
passed a windmill, a light bulb went off.
“We determined that the biggest waterfall in South
Texas was, in fact, a windmill when the water comes out
of the pipe into the tank,” Mahler said. “Then when it
overflows out of the tank onto the ground there is usually
a depression from the cattle. These depressions and the
local ephemeral ponds fill up with wetland plants such as
Arrowhead and blue water lilies in wet weather. That’s
what we saw and this became our model,” he explained.
Once the water feature and riparian habitat were
completed the plants were added in phases. The second
phase was the cactus and succulent garden and the
following year the bordas escarpment. The bordas
escarpment of South Texas is a low caliche ridge that
extends from Starr County north and eastward to the
Nueces River. Mountain laurel, cenizo and many other
species grow on these dry chalky hills.
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