{"id":13873,"date":"2022-09-02T08:31:00","date_gmt":"2022-09-02T14:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=13873"},"modified":"2022-09-01T10:50:53","modified_gmt":"2022-09-01T16:50:53","slug":"grow-native","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=13873","title":{"rendered":"Grow Native"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Emilio Flores
Los Fresnos News<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Los Fresnos, Texas \u2014 On Thursday, August 18th, two master gardeners shared their passion along with much insight on growing your own garden! Norma Cruz, a Cameron County Master gardener along with Janet Schofield also a Master gardener are both volunteers for our local Nature Park here in Los Fresnos.
Norma led the presentation by first bringing up the topic of Local Environmental Conditions and how it can affect our plants. She provided a website to keep individuals up-to-date on drought conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Currently, with the recent rains, we are actually in better conditions the National Weather Service in Brownsville put out a statement saying with the recent tropical disturbance has actually brought the much-needed rains to our area; leaving only a few portions in the far upper Valley in drought conditions.
Norma Cruz shares that growing plants isn\u2019t as difficult as you might think. She says stresses the solution is to grow native plants. She says, \u201cThese are plants that have evolved in a specific area and have been growing there naturally for hundreds of years.\u201d Adapting to the local climate, rainfall patterns, and temperatures. She also shares that our native plants tend to grow deeper roots as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


The benefits
<\/em><\/strong>Native plants will need less maintenance, saving money, and providing native habitat. Native Plants Feed and House Native Pollinators! Incorporating more native plants into our area helps to reinstate our commercially influenced environment back to its natural roots.
Cruz mentions that a few years ago we had a vortex freeze, \u201cIt kinda wiped us all out, but what remained?\u201d She says, \u201cAll the Native Plants.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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How do you get started?
<\/em><\/strong>Cruz encourages the community to reach out to local nursery professionals, listed below are just a few to start with:
Heeps LRGV Native Plant Nursery<\/a> \u2013 1714 S. Palm Court Dr. Harlingen, Texas 78552 || Ph: 956-457-6834
Grimsell Seed Co.<\/a> \u2013 213 W Monroe Ave, Harlingen, TX, United States, Texas || Ph: 956-423-0370
Waugh\u2019s Nursery<\/a> \u2013 5012 N. Jackson Rd., Pharr, TX, United States, Texas || Ph: 956-686-5591
River Oaks Nursery \u2013 31037 Gamble Rd, San Benito, TX 78586 || Ph: 956-399-4078
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In the presentation, she also mentions many different websites to visit like agrilifeextension.tamu.edu you can also contact the Texas Master Gardeners at the Cameron County Extension office for advice\/help, and there are tons of youtube videos that can help. Cruz says one that she loves is a Youtube channel called Central Texas Gardeners; Growing a Greener World<\/a>.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some native plants she mentioned include:
Vitex, Texas Lilac
Turk\u2019s Cap
Fiddlewood
Esperanza
Cenizo
Lantana
Gregg\u2019s Mistflower
Blue and Red Salvia
Plumbago
Frog fruit
Scorpion Tale
Trumpet Vine<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Norma Cruz says \u201cSo Remember\u2026 Start small, assess the sun conditions, create a native plant wish list, time planting with the best season, use local native plant nurseries, and do your research.\u201d
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Cruz ended the presentation with a quote by Doug Tallamy, saying, <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBecause life is fueled by the energy captured from the sun by plants, it will be the plants that we use in our gardens that determine what nature will be like 10, 20, and 50 years from now.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Emilio FloresLos Fresnos News Los Fresnos, Texas \u2014 On Thursday, August 18th, two master gardeners shared their passion along with much insight on growing your own garden! Norma Cruz, a Cameron County Master gardener along with Janet Schofield also a Master gardener are both volunteers for our local Nature Park here in Los Fresnos.Norma led […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":13876,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[126,10,1,71,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-well-being","category-local","category-news","category-gardengate","category-valley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13873"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13877,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13873\/revisions\/13877"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}