Heather Ginsburg

currently in Austin

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Heather Ginsburg

Gardener/blogger Heather Ginsburg along with her husband Brett, replaced lawn for a xeric-style garden. Instead of the typical rocks and cactus, Heather used drought-tough perennials to attract rather than harm wildlife as well as to wow their kids.

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Recent Episodes

Water, Wildlife, Zen Design

Permaculture meets hospitality at Cosmic Coffee and Beer where Paul Oveisi created sustainable gardens and wildlife habitat set around ponds and gracious waterfall. Step into a meditative journey and Japanese pond design based on Zen philosophy at Rajat and Lisa Agarwal’s garden, members of the Austin Pond Society. In San Marcos, Dawn Houser cultivates food, | watch episode →

Front Yard Forward

For a 1930’s Tudor-style home, landscape designer Kim Beal goes for casual style with formal lines in shady gardens where seasonal flowering joins evergreen textural foliage to define outdoor living destinations. In Kyle, after 12 years in theater management, Leigh’Ann and Jordan Andrews turned the spotlight on a dream cultivated since grad school: growing healthy | watch episode →

January To Do List

Plant: ornamental & wildlife

Annual transplants: pansies, violas, calendula (wildlife plant), snapdragon, stock, larkspur, ornamental kale & cabbage, bluebonnet transplants, poppies. Transplants are preferred over seeds at this point.
Evergreen perennials
Trees, shrubs, roses
Evergreen groundcovers like monkey grass, liriope, creeping germander, frogfruit

Plant: herbs

Calendula, chervil, cilantro, chives, dill, parsley, feverfew, oregano, sorrel, thyme, garlic chives
Protect cilantro and chives in below freezing weather

Plant: food crops

Artichokes, asparagus, onions, greens, lettuce, spinach, radish, carrots, beets, bok choy, collards, kale, peas, turnips, leeks, broccoli
Prep potatoes to plant in February. Get now to cut and dry for a few weeks
Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Vegetable Planting Guides (Central Texas)

Plant: fruit

Apples, peaches, pecans, pears, pomegranates, persimmons, figs, almonds, grapes, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries

Prune

Okay to prune freeze-damaged perennials. If possible, leave as long as possible for wildlife shelter and food on seed-bearers
Prune grapes, fruit trees, blackberries
Cut asters and chrysanthemums to rosettes
Late month: prune woody salvias as much as ⅔ to encourage new growth
Trees, including red oaks and live oaks
Prune rosemary and oregano
Avoid pruning other evergreen shrubs

Divide/Move

Dormant perennials, roses, shrubs and trees. This is the best time to move plants!

Prep

Add compost to vegetable gardens along with organic fertilizer in prep for another round of winter vegetables
Soil test

Lawn

If must mow, keep high to shade out germinating weeds
It’s really not a good idea to overseed with rye unless you have new, muddy construction and a dog!

Other tasks

Spray trees
Keep floating row cover available; avoid covering plants with plastic
Spray fruit trees with dormant oil to control overwintering scale, plum curculio and other pests.

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