May 5, 2025
Changing the Big Picture + Tips & Tricks: New Episode
Across our community, I’ve met more and more people stepping up as habitat disappears and invasive species swallow up native plants that support local wildlife. One passionate helping hand is Chuck Foster, landscaper/co-founder of Kelly’s Gardens, Lawns & Outdoors, and a former member of the Austin PBS Community Advisory Board. Since 2020, he’s been a Capital Area Master Naturalist, now serving as president. This week, he joins John Hart to explain how Master Naturalists work to conserve resources and natural areas while teaching valuable lessons about geology, wildlife, and plants.
With a degree in urban regional planning, Chuck originally worked as a city planner, but he wanted to learn more about how urban development impacted spaces. So, he got involved with several non-profit, nature-oriented groups, including TreeFolks, the Austin Parks Foundation, and the Shoal Creek Conservancy. Then he discovered the Capital Area Master Naturalist (CAMN) program.
CAMN is a chapter of the Texas Master Naturalist program, a statewide organization sponsored by Texas Parks and Wildlife and Texas A&M AgriLife Extension. Find your chapter. On the trails, along greenbelts and nature preserves, in classrooms, and community outreach projects, their mission is to educate and steward. Master Naturalists remove invasive plants, propagate, rescue, and plant native ones, build trails, rehabilitate wildlife, and much more.
In June, CAMN opens applications for the fall class. Spring applications open in October. “We just want to give back where our heart is,” Chuck told us. “In our chapter, we give 10,000 hours or more of volunteer service per year. You kind of break that down, that’s almost 27 hours of volunteer service per day. . . You become more educated, your heart is more full, and you’re giving back to society.”
Attend CAMN’s community events, sign up for the newsletter, participate in work days at the Vireo Preserve and Balcones Preserve, and apply for membership.
But yikes, what to do when a colony of hornets love your patio?
In spring 2024, Daphne installed a shed in her backyard. Then, she and her dad built a ground-level attached deck, which she charmed up with a colorful outdoor rug and comfy furniture. Soon after, she got busy with work and travel. Finally came clean-up day with a battery-operated leaf blower. “But as soon as I turned on the blower, a bunch of hornets emerged from several places under the deck and began to attack me. I stumbled backwards, falling off the deck and abandoning the still-running leaf blower, but managing not to break my neck, and escaping with only a few stings,” she told us.
Instead of furious retaliation, Daphne considered the options. “Hornets are great pollinators, and normally not at all aggressive, so I didn’t want to kill them, I just didn’t want them to make their home in such a dangerous spot,” she added. But, when our warm winter didn’t kill the multiple nests by February, she had to resort to poison.
The plan for this spring (probably in place by now) is to tack down a layer of landscape fabric under the boards—like a carpet—so the hornets can’t access the space under the deck. The hornets can find another hangout, and Daphne can have hers back!
Next, we head to Dripping Springs to hook up with Billy Garza, Hill Country landscaper and grower, who demonstrates his fast-track trick to germinate Texas mountain laurel seeds.
Those cheery red seed coats are as hard as August in Texas! Billy often uses these small trees/shrubs in privacy berms for their evergreen forms and fragrant, purple spring flowers for pollinators.
He lives atop a rocky hill peppered with madrones, mountain laurels, agaritas, prickly pears, and other Texas tough plants. That day, fierce wind threatened to topple us over the cliff, so we hauled everything into the house that Billy built with a buddy. Joe Rocha grabbed some cinder blocks to elevate our subject before shooting with a handheld DJI Osmo. Director Ed Fuentes is behind the camera and Sach Sahib Singh monitors audio.
Billy has a long history with the music scene since he arrived in Austin as a pup, got a job at Antone’s and eventually played at the Broken Spoke, after giving owner James White a Texas mountain laurel he’d grown from seed!
Check out his dance-along, tap-along acoustic band, Billy Garza and the Hill Country Ramblers.
On tour, we wander a beautiful urban park just down from Austin PBS, part of the Austin Community College Highland campus, once home to Macy’s parking lot.
Then jampacked with cars, now it gathers another kind of community: people strolling winding paths of colorful wildlife-friendly plants.
When Austin Community College renovated the mall as a vibrant campus, they worked with dwg. landscape architecture to create a water wise urban park that honors historic roots as home to the St. John Regular Missionary Baptist Association. Read more and watch their story.
Thanks for stopping by! Next week, we focus on summertime petals and pollinators with San Antonio’s Rainbow Gardens.
