Homeowner’s Associations (HOAs) can be a challenge to work with and are often times seen as a high water user. During this Water Talk, a local leader shares tips on how to partner with your HOA to incorporate more native plants in your North Texas yard, and in the HOA common areas, with Texas state laws to reinforce your position.
This is our first water talk of 2024 we started these last year um at least started calling them water talks um last year and so we have a lot of those recorded on YouTube uh they’re also placed on our website and uh encourage you to go take a look at those and uh
We’re really excited about today’s topic um with Diane Weatherby presenting uh talking about how to partner uh with your HOA uh we know HOAs get a lot of um heat uh for being a high water user for um maybe being more um I guess uh demanding is a good word to say
Of citizens and so um there but there are some laws in place that allow you to put native plants and things like that in your landscape uh but there is a little uncertainty uh that Diane can help us navigate today um particularly with just still maintaining the neighborhood aesthetic of that so she’s
Going to talk about how best ways to partner with your HOA uh not just for your landscape but also for U the neighborhood as a whole so I’m going to uh tell you a little bit about Diane uh she’s a Texas master naturalist as well as a member of the Native prairies
Association of Texas and the Native Plant Society of Texas she’s ver Vice chairman of the board of the fly Mound Foundation uh which are the caretakers of the town’s namesake Prairie uh which I live pretty close to so it’s a cool spot to go to uh she is a certified
Citizen Forester and is a board member of the Cross Timbers urban forestry council after her career in corporate Communications and product marketing she turned to her first Passion the natural world she was an interpretive naturalist and environmental educator at the Lewisville Lake lville environmental learning area for 12 years and has been
Working toward a PhD in Forestry at stepen F Austin State University uh for what seems like forever only lacking her dissertation uh which that sounds incredible we’ll have to talk more about that some the time uh in her spare time which doesn’t seem like you have much of
Uh she serves as vice president of lantana’s Denton County freshwater Supply district 7 board of directors and is a member of Lantana hoa’s Architectural Review Committee uh so with that Diane I will um hand it off to you oh and um if you do have questions at any point um during the presentation
Go ahead and put them in the uh chat box and then at the end of the presentation we’ll we’ll go back and get to those so uh with that Diane feel free to take it away all right great um welcome everybody this is a a topic I’m
Passionate about and um I think it’s really important right now I got interested in this uh in the whole topic of HOAs and and what they could or couldn’t say about my native landscape uh when I moved into Lantana which is known to have a strong HOA um moved 12
Years ago I’m sorry N9 years ago to uh yesterday so uh first thing I did was look at the the documents the HOA documents to make sure I could live with them and um one thing I will say about Lanana is that I was encouraged by the number of native plants on their
Recommended plant list I want to say all of the pictures in this presentation or nearly all of them are pictures that I took right here in our neighborhood so um either in my yard or in the case of the background of this slide uh it’s actually um the native plant garden
Right outside of our Event Center so I’ll talk more about that later so let’s talk okay it’s not going forward oh great interesting huh it’s not allowing me to there we go boy that was slow um so let’s talk native Landscaping just what are native
Plants so a native plant is just a plant that’s occurred naturally in a particular place without human introduction so it’s not something that was brought in from Europe or or Asia it’s it’s a plant that has always grown there long before um humans started cultivating plants our native pollinators and other insects
And Wildlife have evolved with our native plants uh so they recognize that plant as providing food shelter the nesting material they need and and also nesting sites the our our native plants are adapted to our and I put sometimes challenging but I believe it’s always challenging Texas environments uh by mostly by developing
Deep root Sy systems so that allows the plants to find water deep underground um some of the roots of of some of the plants go 10 to 20 feet deep depending on what you’re planting uh it also improves th those native plants improve soil infiltration it as the water falls
From the sky like in one of our Gully washers there’s less runoff because uh the Water infiltrates along those those Deep Roots something we don’t think about is those Deep Roots also helped increase carbon sequestration because as the plants uh pull in the the carbon it it deposits it deep
Underground um so even so it it’s kind of a carbon sink if you will and not least it imp they improve the soil quality because it adds organic matter deep into the ground as well not just at the surface of the ground so when I talk about Native
Landscapes in HOA you know surely there are some benefits and there definitely are and they benefit all of us uh starting with increased biodiversity so depending on the number and and um variety of plants that you plant when a a disease or a pest attacks one plant
It’s not going to wipe out everybody’s landscape good example of this is Rose Rosette I mean I lost 20 roses in a previous landscape and foolishly I planted them again when we moved into this house and I lost 10 of them here so um I won’t be planting roses anytime
Soon but um but that’s a great example of what can happen if you plant too much of one kind of plant um also by planting a variety of native plants you’re you’re offering up a buffet nobody wants to eat the same thing every day and not everybody likes to eat the same thing
And same applies to our native insects and and other Critters it and native plants offer a buffet to meet the needs of a variety of them uh reduced water usage is a huge benefit to all of us the these plants are adapted to our periods of flood and
Drought and you know we we’ll have a drought for years I don’t we’ve actually been in a drought for two years now and um and uh the only thing that seems to break a drought in north Texas Texas is a flood so we can pretty much guarantee
We’ll have flooding rains coming up some somewhere in the not too distant future uh the interesting thing is more native plants are killed by overwatering than by underwatering if in in a drought period the the plants may go dormant they may look sick they may be stunted but they’re probably going to survive
Because those roots are pretty deep but um and in the first time it rains they’ll come roaring back but people will water and water and water their plants and then they’ll say well uh my plant is all brown it must need more water well it’s brown because it’s dying
Because you’re overwatering uh one of the best friends that you can have in if you have a native landscape or any landscape is uh one of those soil moisture meters they’re really cheap they’re you can get them for under 10 bucks and um you know go six inches down
And see what how much water is is in that landscape that looks really dry on the surface and you you might be surprised um Native Landscapes reduce the need for fertilizers and pesticides especially chemical fertilizers and pesticides the native plants that we have evolved with the insects in that
Region so the they may have some faes but there are usually friendly insects that go along with it to kill those uh the foes some an example of that are AIDS um and the ladybugs if you spray a chemical pesticide on your plants you’re not only
Killing the the foe the the aphid but you’re also killing the the ladybugs so it’s something to think about as you’re as you’re spraying if you leave things alone eventually your landscape will reach a balance and you won’t l lose the plants that you think you might um also
The native plants obviously are adapted to that area’s soil conditions our soil conditions here we have a thin layer of sand over some really awful um red clay and I have planted native plants in gardens where I’ve chipped away at the soil just to be able
To dig into it and planted plants and they thrived so it it surprised me but um but it worked also you have lower maintenance costs with a with a native landscape um you obviously you’re going to save on water bills because plants just don’t need as much water and it
Also reduce reduces your maintenance requirements for your yard and um you’ll save money on fertilizers and pesticides as well because those things are not cheap there’s other advantages too like cons conserving our Water Resources during a drought period as I said we’ve we’ve been in a drought um upper Trinity
Has had uh watering restrictions in place for two years a lot of people don’t know that but um but we’re we’re restricted to watering uh twice a week and this is uh Native plantings are one way to to help preserve that water it also because of the infiltration it helps Pres prevent
The pollution of surface and groundwater uh when we have the Gully washers they’re not as likely to run off that they’re more likely to to trickle in and um it won’t won’t pollute the pollute our surface water uh not one of the greatest advantages and the reason I
Plant them is because it attracts all those beautiful butterflies and hummingbirds and and other Wildlife to our yards including a lot of native bees and and cool flies and things like that that we don’t usually see uh there’s an increased aesthetic value in curb appeal and that sounds a little
Counterintuitive when so many HOAs are against native plants because they feel like they bring down a neighborhood but what I found is that if you have a a well-maintained native landscape and and we’ll talk more about that in a bit um that people actually really like it in fact I’ve got
Neighbors that come uh one in particular will bring her grandkids by my house every year at to take pictures in front of one of my landscape beds because uh they’re so pretty in the especially in the spring and then of course there’s the pride and just knowing that you’re
Doing something significant to protect and beautify our community so with all those benefits why do HOA neighborhoods say no to Landscapes to Native Landscapes well let’s first talk about HOAs they’re here to stay uh it’s estimated that over a quarter of the population in the U us lives in an HOA
Neighborhood and I think I I don’t have um statistics on it but I believe that in many parts of Texas that number may actually be higher increasingly cities are requiring that new developments be governed by an HOA uh mostly because it solves some of their code enforcement um
Headaches and um I think in uh for for instance in Flower Mound or neighboring City here it they require every new development to have an HOA HOAs exist to protect the homeowners interest in investment if they didn’t we wouldn’t put up with an HOA right um but
It’s been shown that property values in HOA neighborhoods are about five to six% more than in non HOA neighborhoods which is about $25,000 on a $500,000 house and with housing prices go going up you know that is even more now that may not sound very attractive when you’re paying your
Property taxes but when you’re going to sell your house that’s a pretty significant number so why do HOAs resist encouraging native Landscapes if there’s lots of benefits well the this is the biggest reason of all they favor uniformity they want to see everyone with their mold green non-native Turf grasses they the
Bermuda or the St Augustine um they want to see similar shrubs in front of all houses and they they all need to be trimmed into neat little rectangles or balls and the lists of approved plants often are made up of mainly non-natives and and the reason for that is that
Usually the plants that those uh that whoever is writing up the list knows they know the non-natives because that’s what the big box stores sell um traditionalists on the board think Native Landscapes are weedy or unkempt I mean that’s what the picture that they have in their mind it may or
May not be true but that’s that’s what they think uh basically there’s just a general lack of knowledge on HOA boards about native plants and Landscaping and not just native plants most HOA boards are made up of people who have no understanding of landscaping at all other than wanting to see
Everything uniform and there’s a huge resistance to change because change could bring something bad they’re afraid of so um so they’re very resistant to that to that change so looking at what are some typical acceptable Suburban Landscapes well here’s here’s three houses of very acceptable Landscapes uh
These three three houses all happen to be neighbors of mine in fact the one in the middle is the neighbor across the street um these are all on my street in fact you can see the nice little shrubs all neatly pruned um we have front L uh front Landscape Maintenance in Lantana
And that’s how our landscaper trims everything uh needless to say he doesn’t they don’t trim our our um landscape CU they have pulled up too many things that um they thought were weeds that were actually plants but what about this one what about this landscape it’s more it looks
More like what people think of as Zer escaping and this actually also happens to be on my street he’s just down a couple of doors down from me um he has more non-natives in this landscape uh at least non-native to this area of North Texas but his plants are all low water
Usage plants and during the growing season he throws in some natives um like he’s got Lantana that’s blooming all the time and and other um Native flowers that kind of soften the look of the you know the the desert look of that landscape I it’s really attractive but I had to fight
With people on our Arc um our Architectural Review Committee to allow this landscape or to think that this landscape was was beautiful um because it really is it’s it’s just gorgeous so how do we overcome those challenges well one of the first things that I would do is change the
Terminology we have to be careful of the words that we use um to most people Zer escaping means Cactus and gravel kind of like this this picture shows which usually isn’t acceptable to most HOAs um in in most parts of Texas that might be a New Mexico lands Cape
Probably is this obviously doesn’t come from my neighborhood you can see there’s an extensive use of gravel there’s a lot of open space without plants um there’s a few Cactus here and there so Zer escaping just has a negative connotation because this is what people think of as
Zer escaping um even the term wild scaping I think is is in is a term we probably need to do away with when we’re trying to to change mindsets wild scaping to most people implies an unkempt weedy patch something you know something gone wild not groom not suitable for a Suburban
Neighborhood so what are some terms we should be using well things like native landscape native plantings pollinator plants bird friendly plants those all sound a lot more intentional and less disheveled they sound like things that um that you want to do you know everybody wants to protect the
Environment and have um and bring in pollinators and Birds waterwise Plants that’s a great term it because it sounds like a solution to uh the problem that we have with with an increasingly short supply of Water Resources um Native Plant Society of Texas has a definition of wildscape and
I would strongly encourage that to be changed to um a a native landscape rather than a wildscape it’s a way of designing your home’s landscape to attract and benefit birds and pollinators by providing the required food water and shelter that’s uh that’s a perfect definition um it is one that you should
Bookmark to take to your HOA if they start uh not wanting your your native landscape one of the most important things that anybody can do if they want more wildscapes more native landscapes in their neighborhoods are to provide education because that’s what it’s all about it’s most resistance to Native
Landscape comes from a lack of education on what they are so you can provide speakers to your HOA groups um nipat Native Plant Society uh Master Gardeners Master naturalists the regional Water District all of them have speakers that are available to come for free to talk
To HOA groups um these groups will help educate your residents on beauty of native plants on good plant choices for your area and and those plant choices vary greatly within the state of Texas what grows in north Texas may not grow in South Texas or in Corpus along the
Coast and things that grow very well well there may not grow at all here in North Texas so it you have to be careful on on your plant choices they they’ll talk about the benefits of native PL plants you can have talks on landscape principles and how to maintain those
Landscapes um also all of those groups have handouts that you can get for free on the websites and if you make those handouts available to residents of your neighborhood that will help I you know any any piece of Education that you can give them is helpful and a lot of those
Handouts are very attractive they’re not just gray gray reading materials um they’re they’re quick reads that give good points the next point you know social media use social media for good not evil uh you can take pictures of your own landscape take pictures of your neighborhood if you have a neighborhood
Butterfly garden um if you have of uh neighbors that have beautiful native Landscapes take pictures in different seasons um and post them to your neighborhood social media groups we all have have some sort of neighborhood group or community group um or next door and if you post those pictures people
Will start to see the beauty of these Landscapes I like to take a lot of pictures with with insects or you know hummingbirds going to the to native plants things like that and post those as well and also you can collaborate with landscape professionals increasingly um our landscape professionals are starting
To use native plants some of them are really educating themselves on on the use of native plants in landscaping and how to design gorgeous Landscapes using native plants so collaborate with them um if you have a landscaper you know you know help educate them give them some re
Resources to learn more and then recommend those landscapers whenever possible you know in those Community groups people are always asking what landscaper should we use well uh if you provide them um with people with landscapers who will use more native plants you’ll end up with more native
Plants um also all the area water utilities are running campaign they’re sending out materials and they’re holding online and iners programs like this one you know just like upper upper Trinity has been great at providing a lot of those but all the other Regional water districts and um and local um City
Owned water utilities are running campaigns as well so it and these campaigns usually encourage the use of native water-wise plants and water- wise is key here uh they encourage the reduced use of pesi pesticides and herbicides and provide some alternatives for for um those to help um maintain the status
Quo in your in your garden they also talk a lot about the proper irrigation techniques and the amounts you know you don’t need as much you don’t have to water every other day usually for hours at a time they also talk about maintenance of irrigation systems which
Um I think a lot of those uh topics are already available on upper Trinity’s website uh or their YouTube channel because we’ve had those those programs in the past and then area libraries are a great source I know Master Gardeners master naturalists all hold programs at the library for free that talk about
Native Landscaping um and and if you spread the word to your neighborhood that these are available you know share the event post from from Facebook and saying um invite invite neighbors to go with you to these programs tap into these resources cuz everyone I’ve listed there is
Free and just like the Cedar Wax Wing on my pum HW Holly nibble away at the problem make it easy for non-gardeners to get started I mean a lot of us are gardeners and and we know plants or we know how to get started or we’re not
Afraid to get started but that’s not true of most people um first of all it’s not an All or Nothing thing encourage even a small change you know a single plant here or there uh these native plants tend to propagate themselves rather prolifically sometimes and so dig up some of those plants pot
Them up and share the wealth with your neighbors so anyone that plants you know any neighbor that plants one of your uh pongs adds another native plant to your neighborhood uh there’s a company here in in north Texas rooted in and I’m I’m using them because they start they actually started
This when uh egg life extension had something called water University which they’ve since done away with but the people who own rooted in started this um as part of that program these go and grow boxes it’s a brilliant IDE idea it’s just it it is it’s pure genius
Because it also includes a landscape plan so what it is is just a box of 24 plants um they’re Natives and nativ ours so cultivars of native plants and um but most importantly they come along with a landscape plan for either a a triangular bed a circular bed
Or an oblong bed and for most people the thought of Designing a landscape is is just beyond them I know I I have difficulty with that that as well even though I’ve taken landscape classes so they provide basically a paint by numbers landscape plan you you get the
Plants you plop them in the way they tell you to it to do and in a couple of years you have a beautiful Lush native landscape um and I would love to see more of our uh nurseries use this plan rooted inss is is on a pretty big
Scale now they even send those boxes to the Hill Country to I think San Antonio and Austin they have drop off places but um I you could do that on a smaller scale some of these smaller nurseries and that would just really go a long way
To helping people learn and know how to plant some of these native landscaping and when somebody asks you where to buy some plants send them to nurseries that are more apt to carrying natives so you can start with npsot list of nice nurseries a nice stand for natives improve and conserve environment um
Every chapter has a list of nice nurseries in that particular area and those nurseries will carry natives that are um adapted to that particular area of Texas work the system from the inside this is the approach I took get appointed to the AR Architectural Review Board um
I did that I kept spouting off and one of the U HOA board members came to me and said okay we’re starting a a resident um run Arc uh we’d like you to be on it um so I had to put my money where my mouth was uh and and it makes a
Difference get elected to the HOA board itself uh because appeals to the arc end up eventually at the HOA board and if you’re working from the inside you can help influence that work with the HOA to plant native Gardens in the common areas all HOAs have common areas that’s one of
The things that they spend money on maintaining and um if you work with them you’re more likely to get um get some native plant uh Gardens going and in fact in Lantana we built a new event center and I um when when I when it was under construction I looked at the landscape
Plan and I said wow here’s this great big bed right next to the event center can I have that to plant a Native Garden only I said Monarch way station which made it acceptable so uh they not only did they give me the the plot of land to
Plant the garden but I got a grant to plant it as well which was even better and you can also write new guidelines yourself to encourage the use of native plants you know create new suggested plant lists that include more Natives and and fewer non-natives and definitely take off the invasives um
Present that to the board rather than having them try to create something from scratch because remember these people do not know plants for the most part and the easier you make it for them to adopt something new the more likely it is to get adopted uh create a a native landscape that
Looks intentional so I say lead by example what you do will have impact on the rest of the community and the ability to uh continue with Native Landscapes so just make sure it looks intentional um the npsot native landscape certification program classes can really help with that they’re
They’re it’s an awesome program you take the first class um is required for all future classes um I think there’s four in the series plus one outside of the series called uh landscaping for Birds my personal favorite but um those those are really helpful and you can encourage landscapers landscape professionals to
Take those classes as well put a neat border around your plantings I cannot under I I can’t over um confirm how important that is if it if a bed has a neat border around it it is way more likely to get accepted um keep the true
Weeds at Bay you know what’s a weed anything that’s growing where you don’t want it and so if you have things that are overgrowing and they might even be native plants but if it’s if it’s starting to overgrow your bed or it’s looking not very tidy um you know get
Rid of those weeds put up a sign and you’re you’re going to hear me talk about signs over and over again again but put up a sign explaining your native Landscaping there’s several available uh National Wildlife Federation has their certified wildlife habitat it’s pretty easy to obtain um uh Monarch was station
Signs are uh from Monarch watch uh all you need to do is make sure you’re meeting the criteria of each of these programs and also there are signs available online everywhere go to Etsy go to Amazon uh there’s some really cute really attractive signs that you can purchase on online that explain what
Your Native Garden is and why you’re growing it and then nipsa just introduced a new sign I just ordered mine last week um it’s really it’s a really nice sign and um so again it just explains this I’m growing a Native Garden and this is the benefits of of that
Garden um and also you know what you need to follow the requirements whether you agree with them or not you do need to follow the requirements so if your HOA requires you to get approval for new landscape plans get the approval um but if you’re running it through the approval process make it
Easy for them to approve it do a handdrawn plan I I hand I drew mine out on um uh graph paper but when you draw it show the full size of the plant don’t just put a dot like I’m going to plant uh a purple cone flowers here I’m going
To plant blue Miss flower here with little dots show the full size of the plants the size they’ll be after three years of growing um so so that they can see that that bed will be full uh and and not just little tiny individual plants use colored pencils that’s great if you’re
Planting zexmenia use yellow use a yellow pencil to show that that Circle if you’re planting Gulf mu use a pink pencil you know if if you have an evergreen shrub of some sort use a use a green pencil uh just anything you can do to help them visualize how that bed
Might look in the end and then include pictures of the plants you intend to use uh I on my committee I am always having to bring up pictures on my on my phone to show them yes this plant will will work here in this spot and it will fill
In the spot and if the uh if the person applying for approval would just have included that pictures those pictures it would have made the approval go through much more quickly make your yard a demonstration garden there is no better ad advertisement for the use of native
Plants and Gardens than to have your own demo Garden right there in your yard plant with a purpose uh you know again make it per purposeful uh make it intentional use mostly native plants again this this uh the picture here is of um actually the same be person Zara is the the previous
Picture um and she has non-natives in her plantings but they’re they’re just kind of scattered few and far between it’s almost all natives use a variety of plants to have color all year round try to find plants that are you know some that are evergreen um some that will bloom in the
Winter and you know what in in the winter time that may be your best chance to put some of the non-natives the things that survive up north that don’t survive down here um just just for a little bit of color and so it doesn’t look quite as Bleak in the winter uh
Because despite the fact that North Texas has winter and plants die in the winter uh HOAs don’t seem to like that very much so it’s just the way it is um again make it look intentional use borders use professional looking borders uh cut back aggressive plants things
That are overgrowing your beds um it doesn’t have to look wild and out of control it can look now th this landscape in this picture it’s very full but it doesn’t look out of control it looks like it’s supposed to look and also when you’re planting your your landscape use wildlife habitat
Principles have different heights of plants don’t make them all one height um make sure you use use differing Heights make sure you provide food for the native Critters that are that you’re looking for you know you should have nectar plants um but you should also have plants that will be eaten you know
Those butterflies don’t exist without caterpillars and so plants that the caterpillars will eat in every butterf fly has its own specific host plant like Gul frares and passion vine um plant enough of those so that when the caterpillars eat it it doesn’t bother you you know that you plant some for
Them plant some for you is the way I put it um leave seed heads on if you can I’ve got cowpen daisies right now in my in a bed in my backyard that the smaller birds are um landing on right now and eating seeds out of those seed heads so
I’ll leave those up for uh probably another week or two and then it’s time to cut back um if you can include a a source of water like a a cute bird bath or something like that the birds will love you and it will really draw in
Birds um especially in the winter time if you can keep water in it without freezing just most importantly keep your curb appeal High just maintain a kept look so when you’re when somebody is driving by or walking by they look at that and they go wow that is really
Gorgeous if you are cited by the HOA don’t ignore it don’t just throw out the the letter and and and ignore it um go to the arc and say okay what what do I need to do compromise where it’s reasonable you know figure out what will
Be accepted and and and fix it be respectful if you go in fixing for a fight you know you’re you’re going to get a fight but if you go in respectfully and go through the appeal process as they ask you are more likely to um to get your
Way and what about the appeal process well during the appeal process advocate for native plants and educate the board it’s all about education um as I said before the board usually doesn’t understand what you’re trying to do and so if you educate um them they’re more
Likely to to find out that what you’re doing really is intentional um clarify for them what our weeds and what the plants are and what their benefits are and emphasize that native plants suppress those weeds so if you have a nice full native plant bed you’re more
You’re less likely to have weeds um play up any credibility that you have if you’ve gone through um the nlcp program from nips side or if you have a certified landscape you know play that up uh look these National organizations or local organizations have uh recognized the benefits of my landscape
And when you’re arguing use recognized resources credible resources to show that your plants are native uh things like nipat lists uh which every chapter has on their on their website a as does the the state um go to The Wildflower C Center you know the Lady Bird Johnson
Wildf Flower Center they only list native plants there so use that use Texan by Nature you know use use any of those recognized resources that you can find and if all else fails cite the law uh Texas Senate Bill 198 was passed in 2013 and it actually prevents HOAs from
Prohibiting the use of drought resistant landscaping or water conserving Turf which means yes you can have buffalo buffalo grass long BS because that is a water saving Turf um of course you can only have those if you have a lot of sun but um you can’t you can’t prohibit the
Use of drought resistant Landscaping however HOAs can still require preliminary approval of any plans uh control is limited and it has to be reasonable so they can’t just with withhold approval in if it’s unreasonable they have to have a good reason um and it h like I said it has to be
Reasonable uh however they can require preliminary approval so you know go in if you’re changing your landscaping and your HOA wants preliminary approval Do It um they can still require a certain amount of turf graphs in in Lantana that’s 50% of your front has to be um
Turf which I am trying to get changed um hopefully we can reduce that to some extent uh but they can also require that beds be clearly defined and neatly edged uh like I said that makes your garden look intentional and also they can dictate certain types of material of multi
Materials um in our case it’s a it’s a great um restriction I mean we say you can’t use Bright White Rock I think that’s about the only thing as long as it looks natural it’s it’s accepted so with all of that are there success stories well of course there are um the
City of Lewisville has this great program it’s it’s new it just has started about a year ago um called roots for wings it was the brainchild of lewisville’s Mayor TJ Gilmore and in fact he is presenting at the state Symposium uh for npsot next let’s see I
Think it’s March 2nd um because of this this program and other initiatives that Lewisville has done um the the members of of npsot and and our chapter the El forth chapter of master naturalist wrote all the materials for this program what it does is it requires a homeowner to attend a mandatory
Workshop and fill out an application and in that application they have to include their plant list and photos of the space that they’re intending to plant and then they have to have it inspected and and the inspection is actually done by volunteers from npsot and the master naturalist and they’ll go out and
They’ll also offer advice they’ll help with the plant choices things like that so once it meets all the criteria the homeowners get a yard sign so the yard sign again with the yard sign right the the sign um shows that they’re part of that program and then they have to
Recertify every three years and that’s just a way of um making sure that they’re continuing um with the upkeep of their native landscape so the city is also looking at their weed or ordinances they’ll revise them to incorporate the pollinator program um code enforcement has not quite caught up to this program
Yet but uh when they do site a roots for wings yard for whatever reason um it it’s usually quickly overturned so it’s a it’s a great program um hats off to Lewisville City of Denton is participating in the National Wildlife federation’s Community wildlife habitat certification which includes a yard sign
Again with the signs um to show that you’re a Denton Wildlife Steward um Denton’s also working towards a bird City Texas certification it it is a member of B City USA and Monarch City USA and they’re planting open spaces and rights of way with Native plantings now
When when they have those spaces that need to be planted instead of just throwing in Bermuda grass which frankly is easier for them because all they have to do is mow it right um they’re planting it with Native plantings and other cities in the area are doing it as
Well I know Lewisville definitely does that um Flower Mound has really started doing a a lot more of that planting their their rights of way and in some of their Open Spaces with um Native PL so uh you know keep keep encouraging your your cities to do that as well um
In the Hill Country the Texas mat master naturalist and npsot team together to create the pollinated Garden assistance and recognition program and they help residents plan native Gardens including and they include a site visit education again uh they discuss with the homeowner what would be the best thing to plant in
That area area um give them a lot of free advice and then once they plant that they get cert the homeowner gets a certificate of recognition and they get a sign again with the signs so um this one was a bit of a battle in in Flower Mound right
Next door to me here um in the Wellington HOA uh we had a couple who planted native plants in their hell strip the area between the sidewalk and the road and um they had completed the master Garder program they also participated in the year-long Denton County uh water conservation study
Because they planted so many natives within their yard but they got cited by the HOA and but they didn’t get cited because of their native plants they got cited because they didn’t get prior approval for it um the Rosen cranes turned around and they cited the law the
That um the one that I had mentioned earlier and they half one okay they did comply with the HOA to a point so I took this picture last fall when it was still when everything was still Lush and green um you can see the hell strip is now
Modow Bermuda grass that’s where they gave in but the rest of their yard is they’ve maintained the minimum of amount of turf grass and the rest are all Native plantings and I’ll tell in the summer when it’s all blooming wow it’s a showstopper it looks
Awesome so you can do it even in an HOA so what’s next well most of all advocate for native plants educate educate educate but be polite about it okay you don’t you don’t win hearts and Minds by being combative be polite sell the benefits of native plants that we’ve gone over
Um and encourage people your neighbors to start somewhere even with just one plant like I said give them your passal along plants and um that’s one more plant in your neighborhood plant a community Native Garden and look for Grants uh you’d be surprised that all those Open Spaces a
Lot of communities would love somebody to take them over uh what I have found however in the native in that butterfly garden that I planted I have to keep our landscaper out the hoa’s landscaper they can’t because they don’t know the difference between um a plant a perennial that’s popping up from
Seed or a weed so just because they have not been educated so we kind of keep them away and we maintain it ourselves but get get a group of residents to maintain and by doing that you’re teaching those residents also about native plants and how and encouraging
Them to plant more um manage your natural landscapes so they don’t look UNT the the neater they look the more like a beautiful Cottage Garden rather than a weedy field um the more likely they are to be accepted and then use uh um weeks like Texas native plant
Week or even Arbor Day or or some of the other Earth Day um plan activities and education during those times call on those people who um uh call on call on the people the resources that I gave you earlier and speaking of resources here are some that
You can find online um take a take a screenshot of that we’re uh this is being recorded so you can go back and um come back to this later if you don’t get a chance to get a screenshot of it but there’s a um National Wildlife Federation has a guide to passing
Wildlife friendly Property Maintenance ordinances and that is a great guide to use with your HOA if you’re trying to help them rewrite their uh their docs to enable uh more native Landscaping um there’s npsot has a wonderful publication called dealing with your homeowners association I encourage everybody to
Download that and and use that refer to that uh you can take a look at um lewisville’s roots for wings program and also the Hill Country pollinator Garden assistance program online um to get an idea of something that you might do in your own Community start up you know
Every every program starts with a single person so if you can take something like that on do so and then there’s the link to that Texas Senate Bill 198 um from 2013 so uh use that when you need to I hate pulling out that first but but
It’s a good it’s a good law so um so that’s it I just want to show this this last picture is um that’s the Monarch was station or our butterfly garden our n native landscape in Lantana the one on the left shows the day that we planted it um it’s missing all the
Little I I actually put in spoons to Mark where some of the plants were cuz they were so little but um you can see the HOA even put down drip irrigation for me which was fantastic but that’s where it started the one on the right is
Where it was three years later so that old ad it it sleeps it creeps it leaps really played out in our in our Monarch Way Station we get a lot of comments on that Landscaping