Urban permaculture project San Antonio Texas

I'm working on a big new project at my dad's house in San Antonio, Texas.  With his approval, I'm turning a partly dead and difficult to mow grass slope in his front yard to a water retention landscape and pollinator habitat.  I also hope to eventually install a small vegetable garden along the sunny North edge of the front yard.

The work so far:

Plant list:

Lantana Lantana urticoides - pollinators

Sotol Dasylirion texanum - important historical food source for native peoples of the region, pollinators

Esperanza Tecoma stans - pollinators

Pride of Barbados Caesalpinia pulcherrima - pollinators

Agave (unknown species) - edible

Spineless Prickly Pear Opuntia - edible

Bearded Iris Iris germanica - pretty

Mealy Blue Sage Salvia farinacea - pollinators

Mist Flower Conoclinium coelestinum - pollinators

Lemon Balm Melissa officinalis - edible, medicinal, pollinators

Garlic Chives Allium tuberosum - edible, pollinators

Winecup Callirhoe involucrata - edible, pollinators

"Ice Follies" Daffodil - pretty

Grape Hyacinth Muscari armeniacum - pretty

Pavonia Pavonia lasiopetala - pretty, polinators

Prairie Verbena Glandularia bipinnatifida - pollinators

Tawny Daylily Hemerocallis fulva - edible, pretty


These are the major plants so far, but I may add more later.

I have apparently inspired the neighbors to the South, who want to install something similar to the xeriscape portion of the garden in order to save $ on irrigation.  I have offered to help them and supply some plants.

Are you aware that the city offers free wood chip mulch? Might be useful to y'all. There are two locations but I've only gone to the Nelson Gardens Recycling Center. Only downside is there's often bits of plastic or other trash mixed in

Thanks!  Because I don't have a means to transport the mulch I went ahead and hired a landscaping company to deliver 2 cubic yards of it.  Somewhat $ but worth it for the convenience.

Added patches of Bluebonnet Lupinus texensis and Golden Crownbeard aka Cowpen Daisy Verbesina encelioides to the planting.

Discussed with the neighbor what plants she might like in her xeriscape garden.

Measured the area for the vegetable garden (about 5' x 30').

Planted seed of shade tolerant native flowers in a large patch of bare dirt in the back yard.

It's not looking that great, but last weekend I finished planting the front yard pollinator garden.  Planted lots of Daffodils and Grape Hyacinths which I hope will look good come Spring.  I plan to do some decorative stonework over the ugly concrete base of the mailbox post.

I added a patch for vegetables to the side of the front yard.  I plan to plant a combination of annual and perennial edibles.

Began planting that space: Cardoon, Walking Onions, Tawny Daylilies, Canada Onions, and Mexican Tree Spinach  (Chaya).

Started working on the neighbor's side of the driveway, initially just doing the portion belonging to my dad, but ready to incorporate some of the neighbor's yard next weekend.

Grass cleared, area mulched, and planting designed:

Also planted a polyculture of leaf and root vegetable seeds in the little veggie area.

Finished the neighbors' xeriscape corner.  Three featured species; Sotol, Agave, and Bearded Iris, with seeds planted of Texas Bluebonnets and other wildflower, also Dutch Iris bulbs.

The next area I plan to refurbish is this corner near the front door, where I plan to make a shade garden with small water feature and Toad habitat.

I will be removing the stupid Ligustrum tree.

Removed the tree and started clearing the gravel only to find a layer of plastic underneath.  Ugh!

Thank you for sharing this journey, Tyler. It's been fun and also inspirational to see the changes and what a difference it makes to how it makes things look.

Tiny bit of progress.  Finished clearing and mulching the corner, and planted tubers of Taro and Turmeric, as well as plants of Lemon Balm and Mint. Also made a little drip fountain for birds and toads.

Here's the next spot I will be redesigning, the bed opposite the shade corner.  This unfortunately also has horrible gravel and plastic, which I will remove.  I also plan to reduce the size of the boxwoods and try to make them into cute little spheres.  This area will be planted as a Cottage Garden with flowers, herbs, and a few vegetables.

And just for the heck of it I did some decorative stonework around the base of the mailbox post and added a tiny Door of Mystery.

I've changed my mind about the North side of my dad's front yard - instead of a vegetable area, I have decided to make it a tiny food forest, about 400 square feet.

The productive trees and shrubs I plan to plant are Mulberry, Fig, Pomegranate, Feijoa, and Moringa.  Support plants will include Esperanza, Pride of Barbados, and Goldenball Leadtree, Bluebonnet, and Black-eyed Pea.  This area will be maintained as a mixed border with trees trimmed to large shrub size, about 5-6 feet tall so as not to overwhelm the yard.

Planted a row of Agave to define the neighbor's side of the food forest border:

Impressively quick progress! What kind of rock did you place around the mailbox? It’s quite interesting.

I’m curious about the drip fountain. Is this something good for birds and frogs, but not for mosquitos? I’d love to try to support a frog population here to control slugs, but the mosquitos are crazy here, and I don’t want to make it worse. And there are lots of cats around, so I can’t make it too friendly for birds. My neighbors have the birds in hand.

Thanks,
Daniel

Thanks!

The rocks are from an area on my place in the country where acidic water has eaten holes in the limestone.  There may even be caves under that area...

I don't need to worry about skeetos in the drip basin because I can easily dump it out every few days.

Obtained the first yield from this project, baby salad greens.

Planted five baby fruit trees in my dad's mini food forest; Pomegranate, Fig, Dwarf Mulberry, and two Pineapple Guava.

Installed a worm tower in the future dooryard garden vegetable area.  This garden will be maintained using no-dig techniques because of established boxwoods, but I do have to scrape off the existing gravel with plastic sheet underneath.  The soil is very shallow with a limestone rock layer below, so this will be a raised bed.

I brought soil from my garden at home to top off the poor dirt in this bed. Planted Bearded Iris, Oregano, Thymes, and seeds of Lettuce, Spinach, Beet, Radicchio, Chard, Radish, and Cilantro.  Eventually this bed with have a few plants of Tomato, Sweet Pepper, Eggplant, Cucumber, and Summer Squash.

Planted herb and flower seeds in another section of the Dooryard Garden.

Planted seeds of Moringa (under cloches), Jack Bean, Tatume Squash, Roselle, and Devil's Claw in the food forest part of the front yard.

Here is the Barred Owl who lives in the neighborhood.

Heavy oak leaf fall is crushing my seedlings!  So I know now not to plant small seeds in this area.  Large seeds are doing ok.

San Antonio Water System has a program in which one can get $ coupons by replacing lawn with low-water plants.  I was able to get two $100 coupons for my dad's yard so I could extend the xeriscape and pollinator habitat uphill.  I was able to spend lavishly on beautiful flowering plants as well as a couple of edibles.  Plants were approximately half off.

The rebate program:  https://www.gardenstylesanantonio.com/watersaver-landscape-coupon/

I think all municipalities could have such a program.

Baby Moringa in urban food forest:

I moved the Bearded Iris from this bed to their own bed and replanted with transplants of Sweet Banana Pepper and Ichiban Eggplant.  

Filling in this space with more flowers, herbs, and vegetables:

The three Goji plants wayne sent me are growing nicely in the mini food forest:

My precious Chaya survived the winter and is now coming out of dormancy in the mini food forest!

I'm building a long stretch of garden beds along the neighbor's fence on the north side of my dad's yard.  Beds face south so should get some sun at least part of the time in this very shady yard.  These will be a mixture of fruiting shrubs and annual and perennial vegetables.  And flowers.  Always more flowers!

Crap.  Deer have returned to the neighborhood.

Collecting wood in the creek behind my dad's house.  Also lot of trash down there, unfortunately.  I'm using the weed to build beds on contour in the back yard.

Back garden fenced