- Howdy.

I'm John Hart Asher.

This week on "Central Texas Gardener," natural garden designer and author Benjamin Vogt brings in new garden ethic into our gardens and communities.

At The VORTEX Repertory Theater, an urban butterfly sanctuary restores life in a daily pollinator performances.

Colleen Dieter of Central Texas Seed Savers shows how libraries are planting the future.

And entomologist Wizzie Brown answers your insect questions.

So let's get growing right here, right now.

- [Announcer] "Central Texas Gardener" is made possible by generous support from Lisa and Desi Rhoden, Diane Land and Steve Adler, and by the Travis County Master Gardeners Association.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) - An urban butterfly sanctuary restores life to ravaged soil in daily pollinator performances at a repertory theater.

- Well, it was an abandoned electrical warehouse, and they would drive trucks in here.

I believe there were, parts of this garden were cemented over.

The bar was just an open lean to, it had no walls.

I remember my dad, Jim Cullum, saying, you know, well, you know, "You could just pave this whole thing and you could park cars in here."

And I'm like, "No, it's got this specialness to it, and I really wanna plant more trees and more plants and have this be the destination that people wanna sit in this outdoor space."

- And I've always just felt that it helps, helps your soul, you know, feel more grounded and connected to the earth, being able to work with the garden and learn its lessons.

- I was in graduate school and formed The VORTEX with colleagues in grad school.

And our first year we performed at Mexic-Arte downtown in, they had a theater space, and we performed in several locations in their building.

And then we got an abandoned movie theater on Ben White Boulevard, which was a movie triplex.

It was 17,000 square feet.

And then in 1994, we started the search for a new home, and I was able to strike up a deal with the property owner where he gave us a cheap rent for the first couple years.

We did shows out here.

That's what these truss towers that have all the plants on them, they came in so that we could have lighting outside.

Well, I think it's really essential that we make theater that is creating the world that we want to make.

So in theater, we have a choice of not necessarily creating reality, but creating, like, a magical realism, like a world that challenges the status quo, that takes on important issues of our time.

And one of those, of course, is climate crisis and the environment and the way that humanity is interacting with the world.

I think it's super important that we're bringing those values outside and into reality and saying, yes, this is the magic that we believe in, this is the truth that we believe in, this is what we're trying to do.

And then these are the real plants that are creating that lifecycle.

We had been planting trees here at The VORTEX and cultivating some plants.

So earth has really always been at our foundation as one of our core values.

But then we decided to rebrand the whole Butterfly Bar and create a butterfly sanctuary as part of that endeavor.

So that was in 2011.

And we had our first garden party that spring in 2011 with the newly named Butterfly Bar, and then the Butterfly Garden.

And people brought all kinds of plants.

We planted them all around the deck.

The last couple of years, my Girl Scout troop has come and we see more and more children going and selecting these plants with their parents, and then coming here and getting to plant a plant.

And then when they come back to see a show or to eat at Patrizi's or something, they always go and visit their plant.

- One of the ones everyone notices is the passion vine.

Being able to walk through it and around it, you can see the caterpillars.

You see them eating the leaves, it's kind of right in your face there.

And I put the, a sign on there for which butterflies like to lay their eggs on them and drink the nectar from the flowers.

So I'll let it hang down and kind of, people can kind of move it and kind of be more a part of it that way.

I've been embellishing the beds in front of the outdoor stage here.

And there have been years where they have gotten so tall you can't see the performers.

So I'll prune them in a special way.

It's a little more under control now.

What's wonderful about any performance that happens on the stage in the garden is that you have this built in audience.

By the end of the performance, they have been a part of this experience and this magical garden space.

- You know, when we came here and this was a fairly barren space, so, you know, we're trying to visualize how to make it really verdant, how to make it alive.

And then, you know, we start hearing all this tragic news about the bees and the butterflies, and, you know, how could we make an urban garden that will help preserve what's really important about life, these pollinators.

The butterflies offer such an amazing lesson because, you know, they know how to lay their egg on the plant that their caterpillar is gonna eat.

And then the caterpillar miraculously knows how to make a chrysalis and transform into a totally different animal.

I mean, that's crazy.

And when you look, like, at a monarch chrysalis that the magic going on inside, you can see these glowing golden lights.

And it's like, that is magic that's happening in there.

- I've always loved taking photographs.

I try to pay attention to what's going on in that particular plant, whether something needs to be pruned or maybe I could do a little quick weeding.

And that's when you start to notice little butterflies.

Sometimes they're big butterflies, sometimes they fly right by your face, or sometimes they, you see a shadow and you look over and you'll see them, and I'll take a moment and put down the hose or put down the pruners and try to get a picture.

I love the idea of being able to have some sort of catalog or inventory of what we've seen here at The VORTEX.

- A lot of the art that's in the garden, that's theater stuff.

We have, over the years, put objects that were particularly cool out and kind of let them decay over time.

The public who's out here, they're like, "What is that thing?

What is that thing?"

So there's sort of an interest in, there's always something different happening here, whether it's a performance on the stage or a tower of books.

- Just came out of the theater from a show called The Black Feminist Guide to the Human Body by Lisa B. Thompson.

She is a professor at UT.

But the set designer wanted a book helix, and then it turned into a tree.

The barrel was a set piece.

It was used as like a barrel fire scenario.

So after the show, we, you know, just decided to repurpose it as a big pot.

I made sure that had drainage from underneath.

One of our talented artistic work study students painted the outside.

So it was just kind of rusted metal before.

It's a roughleaf dogwood.

It just had a bunch of clusters of white flowers that bloomed in there.

They'll turn into seeds, which birds also will partake in.

- It came from San Antonio, from Brackenridge Park, and my father being the lover of old decaying things that must be saved.

They were gonna tear this shed down.

And he went over to them and he said, "Okay, well, how much do you want for it?"

And he got it pretty cheap.

And he hired a crew to come in and tear it down and bring it up here where it sat resting in the yard for a few years.

And I was like, uh.

I told him either he needed to take it to the dump or put it together.

We've rented it to people to have little events.

We've done art installations in there.

Not only are the people who are doing the shows gathering here, people who are coming to the shows gathering here, but people who are just part of the theater community come over and have their production meeting or come over after their show and have a drink.

And they know that they're also supporting a theater when they come here.

Patrizi's is busy every night, unless it's storming.

People want to sit outside and eat pasta and, you know, have a glass of wine from the Butterfly Bar and maybe they'll take in a show.

I feel like that, (gentle music) that has made this space alive.

And that's kind of coming back to that heart of the community and family and the way that people are connected through the theater.

I've been really thrilled to get to see the whole garden come to life.

It's always one of my favorite moments when Alex says, "We've got a new caterpillar or a new butterfly," and I come rushing out to see what it is and check it out.

And it's really exciting.

- Acclaimed garden designer and author Benjamin Vogt brings "A New Garden Ethic" into our yards, gardens, and communities.

Today, he joins us from his home in Nebraska to explain what's behind his mission to prairie up and unlawn America.

Hey, Benjamin, thank you so much for being with us here today.

We're excited to talk to you.

I'm a big fan of your work.

How in the world did a PhD in creative writing cultivate their defiant compassion for prairie?

How'd you get started on this path?

- Well, let's see.

We got married, bought a house.

I started gardening because I grew up gardening with my mother.

Even though I didn't really learn that much, I just knew I wanted to have a thousand square foot garden.

So put the plants in, a couple years later, I was on a couple garden tours, and people started asking, "Do you do consulting?"

"Well, no, I'm a professor.

I guess I could do that."

And they're like, "Well, do you do install?"

I'm like, "Well, I guess I could learn how to do that."

It just sort of snowballed from there, and then I was writing articles for Houzz too at the, around that time.

So I, people started to ask me to do articles for other magazines and publications.

And then somebody said, "Hey, have you ever thought of a book?"

And... - Wow.

- Yeah, we could do that.

So it's just, you know, one thing just led into another naturally.

- What were some of the biggest challenges that you had when you said, okay, I'm going away from a lawn into sort of a diverse landscape.

- Just knowing absolutely nothing.

I think, like, a lot of folks who do this, it's the passion that drives us, that starts us out.

And I mean, I could say practical things like the cost of one-gallon pots and which nobody should use anymore.

The effort of digging into thick sloppy clay where the top soil's been stripped off after building a new home.

- Mm-hmm.

- Those were definitely real challenges.

- Your first literary expression, I would say into prairies, because you've got a book of poetry before that, really seems to be, at least from my perspective, based on intimate observations with nature.

You say that "gardens can be an important guide toward bringing us more fully into life and life more fully into us."

And even more so, there's this wonderful little bit that says, "Even the blood of plants is the blood of humans.

The only significant difference is the magnesium atom in chlorophyll and the iron atom in hemoglobin, one captures light and the other oxygen."

- I think all of us are doing, or, and I think especially now in these times, we're doing this gardening work because we're seeking this connection, we're seeking to build this community.

And building community with plants, with the wildlife that come to them just seems like life 101, right?

Yes, of course, I mean, we are all stardust, we're all made of the same stuff, but unfortunately we've forgotten, I really believe that we used to speak the language of plants and animals.

I mean, literally speak and understand.

So when I'm outside with my son listening to birds, you know, I, we're trying to think what are they saying?

What is that specific call?

We're looking at plants, observing them change over the season and how they're interacting with other plants and pollinators around them.

What is the communication that's going on here?

What is the, how can we be a part of this?

Because this is so vital to our existence, right?

Not just physical existence, but emotional existence as well.

- In order to really learn, one must observe.

- Observe and internalize it, right?

You know, this idea of empathy is identifying with other creatures in other places.

But then you can take it a step further into compassion.

And compassion is where you actually act on that, right?

This creature needs this habitat, needs this plant.

Well, we need to bring that in there, right?

What are they experiencing?

What are they feeling?

And then I internalize that and I think, ah, you know, I have so many of these same issues, these same feelings.

So, you know, we are one, and if we're one, we need to stop having so much lawn, right?

Because the lawn is harming all of us.

- Let's discuss "Prairie Up" 'cause I think it's such a wonderful resource for folks.

You've got about five chapters broken in sections.

Can we talk about sort of how you organized the book and why you approached it like that?

- The first chapter is a little bit about the history of prairie, where prairie is.

And people always say, "Well, I'm not from Nebraska, so this book doesn't apply to me."

And I'm like, gosh, there's prairies and meadows and savannas everywhere, you know, every state.

And even when you just look at a lawn space, right, this lawn, it is already sort of a meadow, sort of a prairie.

It's at least in that early succession stage.

And we're just trying to heal it.

So I look at the whole book as just how are we healing the landscaping, getting back in the conversation and rebuilding that community and sort of also decolonizing.

- Can we talk a little bit about why it's important to look at plant communities, not just sort of that Victorian approach of collecting a singular species and putting it out there.

- I'm thinking about how, you know, how the plants are going to collectively work for one another and work against one another because that's how prairies work, right?

I mean, that's how we work too in our human cultures.

So I'm thinking, okay, if we have this ground cover, Bouteloua gracilis, blue grama grass, how is this going to help stabilize the site, provide wheat control for other plants that are gonna establish.

This species, this forb species over here has a very deep taproot.

How is that gonna interact and draw resources in the soil compared to a more fibrous rooted grass.

Thinking how they, how the plants work together.

And it's really easy to think community, you just go up to a prairie and, you know, observe what plants are growing together that can tell you a lot about their sort of cooperation.

And then you can bring that into your own habitat, just sort of copy those plants over and see what happens.

- Your sales pitch here, why should America unlawn?

- John?

(laughs) Oh, well that's the next book.

I mean, if it ever makes it, it is, and it is a scary book for me because I am tracing the classist and racist origins of suburbia and lawn.

So lawn is about getting us back into a balance, not just with nature, but with one another.

Again, this idea of decolonizing building community because community is resilience in so many ways, not just environmentally, right?

So when we are, when we look at the world around us and look at how we interact together in that world, yeah, it's community.

Lawn keeps us away from one another.

It's always pitched as democracy.

Everybody's equal, everybody's the same.

But no, it's corporations taking wealth and money and power away from you and the community around you that will keep you healthy.

- You've had some discussions about weedyness because this is a big thing that I run into about trying to do prairie restoration within suburban areas or even cities.

How do we best navigate this sort of aesthetic argument?

If someone's trying to start this biodiverse strategy within their landscape, how can you deal with someone approaching those folks and saying, "It just looks weedy."

- There are two answers to this.

The first quicker answer is that anytime you convert a lawn to a more natural garden, a meadow or prairie garden, people are gonna consider it weedy.

You have created a breach in the system, right?

So you have to be prepared to sort of defend and advocate for that space, even though that's not necessarily always gonna happen.

I think out of 100 gardens we've installed, we've had two issues.

So when you are designing the garden, it's all about, again, plant communities, it's about matching socio ability to the site.

If you have a 100-square-foot garden, you don't wanna put a species in there that's gonna throw a ton of seeds and a ton of root runners and take over.

'Cause that's gonna be weedy quick, right?

You want to employ cues to care.

So these are elements in the landscape that show it, this is an intentional space, wide paths, sitting areas, sculptures or whatnot, or sign that says this is what this garden is doing, this is why it's doing that, this is why it's different.

And then massing and drifting is a design element I'm a big fan of, putting, maybe you have three coneflower here, three coneflower through there, three coneflower over there, and just so we have that repetition through the landscape so people, as their eyes go through the landscape, can sort of connect the dots and make order.

Because that's what we do.

When we're in a 5,000 square foot prairie, we look around and we try to make order from it, connect the dots.

- Well, your new book, as you mentioned, is coming out.

When can folks expect it?

- It's not gonna come out until February of 2027, but I have to have the book to them next month.

So, end of May.

(chuckling) - Oh, well then, that being the case, we don't wanna take up any more of your valuable time.

Benjamin, thank you so much, and I really appreciate your approach to both thinking about and trying to heal our landscapes.

- Thank you so much, John.

Prairie up, everyone.

- Prairie up.

All right, folks, well now let's check in with Wizzie brown.

(gentle music) - Warmer weather can bring many wonderful pollinators, but some of these, such as bees and wasps, are capable of stinging.

Typically, if these insects are foraging, then they're pretty docile.

They tend to get grumpy when you encroach upon their colony or nest because that is where they live and raise their offspring.

Common wasps seen may include paper wasps, yellowjacket wasps, and mud daubers.

Paper wasps are about one inch long, reddish brown, although some may have yellow striping, and make a single-layer paper nest that hangs from a single filament.

Mature paper wasp nests can have several hundred wasps.

Yellowjacket wasps are only half an inch long with yellow and black markings.

And these are cavity nesters.

They also make a paper nest, but it's enclosed with a single opening and may contain several thousand wasps.

Both paper wasps and yellowjacket wasps are social insects, meaning that they have cooperative care of the young, overlapping generations, and particular groups in the colony with assigned jobs.

Social wasp nests located in areas where someone may get stung should be managed.

If nests are in areas where they won't be easily disturbed, such as high on a tree or on a second storey eave, then leave them be as wasps or pollinators and predators and beneficial for the garden.

Paper wasps can be managed with a wasp spray that shoots long distances.

Treat in the early morning or in the late evening when all the wasps are at the nest.

Once wasps are dead, knock down the nest, squish it, throw it away, and clean the area where it was attached to remove the chemical smells the wasp used to locate the nest.

Yellowjackets should be managed by a pest management professional.

Mud dauber refers to numerous wasps in the families Sphecidae and Crabronidae.

These wasps are 3/4 to 1 inch in length, come in various colors and create nurseries from mud.

Mud daubers are solitary wasps and provision mud nurseries they create with insects or spiders.

Once a mud nursery is filled with food, the female wasp lays an egg in it and seals it off, which is the extent of their maternal care.

The female wasp then begins to create another nursery for her next egg.

Bees are another common insect seen at this time of year that are capable of stinging.

When bees are foraging at flowers for nectar, they tend to be docile.

But if you catch one in your hand or if one gets trapped in your clothing, they may sting.

Common social bees you may see foraging in the garden are honey bees, which are not a native species, and bumblebees.

Solitary bees you may see include longhorn bees, sweat bees, leaf cutter bees, and carpenter bees.

Valerie Stein shared her photo of a monarch caterpillar that is infected with NPV virus.

NPV is short for nuclear polyhedrosis virus.

Caterpillars turn black and liquefy and eventually break open to spread the virus particles over the plant to be consumed by other caterpillars.

NPV causes the caterpillars to climb to a high point on the plant where the caterpillar remains until its death and liquefaction leading to virus spreading over more of the plant than it would if a caterpillar died at a low point on the plant.

We'd love to hear from you.

Click on CentralTexasGardener.org to send us your questions, pictures, and video.

- Next, see how to get free seeds or donate from your garden with Colleen Dieter of Central Texas Seed Savers.

(gentle music) - Hi, I am Colleen Dieter.

I'm the founder of Central Texas Seed Savers.

We are a project of fruitful commons.

We are preventing extinction of important plants to Central Texans through seed sharing.

And one of the programs that we support are the seed libraries.

So at Austin Public Library, most of the Austin Public library branches, you can go to the library and take seeds out of the seed collection.

But you can also bring seeds to the library too, and you can put seeds in the book drop or drop them off at the circulation desk.

So today I'm gonna show you how to prepare the seeds for delivery to the library.

Right here I have some inland sea oats.

This is a native grass seed.

And you can harvest the seeds when they're dry.

So just make sure any seeds that you donate to the seed libraries that they're dry so that they don't get moldy.

And the important thing is to write the name of the plant.

Okay?

(marker scratching) Just like this.

And the date that the seeds were collected because the seeds as they age lose their ability to sprout.

So, we need to know how old they are.

And then write "For the Seed Collection" so the librarians will know what this is.

Okay?

And then you can put the seeds in the envelope just like that, and go ahead and seal it up really tightly with tape so they don't escape, and roll all over the library, just like that.

And then, (tape rips) then you're all set.

And most of the Austin Public Library branches have collections.

A lot of the suburban and exurban libraries in Central Texas have seed collections too, so just ask a librarian.

And if they don't have a seed library at your local library, ask the librarian, and Central Texas Seed Savers can help.

We can help set one up for you.

This year I want all of you watching to dedicate yourself to collecting seeds from one particular plant.

And so there's some good books to show you how to do that.

And that way, you can follow one plant through its whole lifecycle and collect seeds from that plant.

So you can contact us at centexseedsavers.org.

You can follow us on Instagram and our Facebook page.

It's Central Texas Seed Savers.

And for Backyard Basics, I'm Colleen Dieter.

- Do you want more from "Central Texas Gardener"?

Follow our producer Linda on Instagram for behind-the-scenes content and go to CentralTexasGardener.org to sign up for our weekly newsletter.

As always, adopt the pace of nature, her secret is patience.

(gentle music continues) - [Announcer] "Central Texas Gardener" is made possible by generous support from Lisa and Desi Rhoden, Diane Land and Steve Adler, and by the Travis County Master Gardeners Association.

(bright flute music)