floral design & botanical blog

Spring Creek Forest Preserve

June 29, 2018 by Travis Ward in Plant Hunt

Spring Creek Forest Preserve is a protected greenspace managed by the City of Garland, saving this Blackland Prairie remnant from the development that has swallowed up the surrounding area. The primary topographic feature here is Spring Creek, which soon after meets Rowlett Creek and empties into Lake Ray Hubbard. The waterway is lined with buckeyes, juniper, and oaks, and this forest of native trees dominate the park. There is a clearing in a central area consisting of a few acres of shallow, limestone soils that support an abundance of native perennials, some of which were in bloom when I visited back in early May.

Koger

December 02, 2016 by Travis Ward in Plant Hunt

Throckmorton County is a 900 square mile, sparsely populated jurisdiction in north central Texas. The landscape is defined by a transition from the oak-dominated Cross Timbers to the scrubby grasslands of the Plains. The area explored lies about 1 mile from the Brazos River where Hog Creek empties into it, and a few hundred yards away from Coon Hollow, a drainage bounded by exposed bluffs of sandstone, rising 30 feet above the horizon. While these features are not particularly impressive, they do vary from the norm of relatively low, rolling hills of the surrounding terrain. If this area of northeastern Throckmorton County had a name, it would be Koger, a small community that once had a school, but leaves no evidence of establishment today.

Slaughter Preserve

April 10, 2015 by Travis Ward in Plant Hunt, Hill Country

This was my first time to visit this preserve, but I was guided by two fellow plant nerds who knew where all of the "goodies" were.

Slaughter Creek

April 06, 2015 by Travis Ward in Hill Country, Plant Hunt

Spring blooms are just beginning to pop in the Texas Hill Country. I spent a little over an hour in the Slaughter Creek Metropolitan Park in the southern suburbs of Austin. This refuge consists mostly of shallow limestone juniper forests, all within a floodplain. Light rain in the morning hours had coated the blooms in an attractive misting of water.

Double Eagle Ranch

January 14, 2015 by Travis Ward in Plant Hunt, Hill Country

Close friends of mine have a wild game ranch off of FM1431, east of Marble Falls in Burnet County. The tract is bordered on the south by the Colorado River and to the north lies the Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge. Located on the eastern edge of the Edwards Plateau, there is a large variety of flora found here between the limestone outcrops.