(calm music) - I would describe my garden as a xeriscape cottage design.

And I wanted something that was really lush and green and had interest all year, but I also wanted it to be drought tolerant.

Hi, my name is Alexa Volpe.

I'm a gardener here in San Antonio, Texas.

I have been, you know, piddling and putzing out in the garden since I was a little kid in South Florida.

And I remember watching, you know, my family growing herbs and veggies and all kinds of things out in the yard.

My parents are Italian and Italian folks love to, you know, get their hands out there in the earth.

And so I grew up watching a lot of friends and family have their little plots.

Down there, you put something in the ground and it grows.

But here in San Antonio, we have to be able to garden between these extremes, you know, the drought and the heat, and then these cold snaps that we get that can be very taxing on our plants.

Not only did I wanna have a space where we could have a destination and something to do, but I also wanted something that would attract wildlife and pollinators and sort of give a little bit back to some of the habitats that, you know, are missing around in our suburban communities.

When we moved here about five years ago to San Antonio, the yard was just pretty much grass and some of our evergreen shrubs and trees in the back.

And there was really no, there was really no purpose to go outside.

You know, it was hot and maybe the kids played in the yard, but I knew that I wanted to create a destination back there.

Was that a patio or a walkway or something?

And there was so many ideas that I had going on, but you know, in those first years, it was kind of discouraging gardening because all the fancy plants that I bought at the big box stores were dying.

And I was like, "Gardening in central Texas is a whole 'nother thing."

We live on top of the Edwards Aquifer, so our soil is pretty shallow and we have a lot of rock underneath.

We have a mix of builder's clay, so I'll dig in certain spots and it'll be that sort of red clay that looks like it's been added to the area.

Other parts of the yard, I'll dig and you'll hit limestone.

And so I started by using, you know, plant lists that I had found on "Central Texas Gardener", plant lists that I had seen from Garden Style San Antonio and the Grow Green Initiative in Austin.

And so those were excellent resources, I think, for building that vocabulary of what works out in our landscapes.

And so I picked based on color.

I picked based on what's a host plant.

I chose plants that would re-seed so that I knew I'd have volunteers in the coming seasons.

I chose plants that would add texture or structure like different yuccas and cacti.

And in the end, what I have is this, you know, this smorgasbord of color out there.

And as an artist on hiatus, I would say these new plants that I have are my palette.

And so when I go out there and I see all of these colors, it gives me a lot of joy.

And maybe not half, but 30% of the plants out there, I propagated from parking lots and construction sites.

You know, I would drive along the road and I'd be parked in a parking lot somewhere and I'd say, "Well, that little thing is growing in between the cracks.

That must be a really successful Texas plant."

And so I started by, I would say, "Well, you know what, this little Indian blanket flower, I'm just gonna see if I can grab the roots, you know, and put it out in the yard and see if it catches."

And so I started to have a lot of luck and I found that if you soak, you know, a specimen in water for the day before and then plant it, I had really great success with the roots catching.

And that luck translated to getting a lot more excited about the plants that are in my area.

I like to think that so much of my garden really is a souvenir of my traipsing around San Antonio because a lot of the plants that I have out there are maybe little pieces I've cut off from a walk along one of the trails here or something from somebody else's garden.

That was actually a little, like a cutting that I took from a plant on the outside and I left it in water.

I let it form some roots and it was a tiny little shoot when I had it.

And it's grown into this monumental plant.

It's taken two springs for it to look like that, and it attracts bees.

I know in the show sometimes people talk about how certain plants are good for their seeds because a lot of birds will eat them.

And I just never catch the birds out there eating any seeds.

And then the other day, I walk by and I see these two beautiful little finches just perch on the stems of the salvia out there and they're just quick, quick, quick nibbled the seats right out.

And so it felt incredibly gratifying.

Like, what I planned to set out to do is to create a space that I could enjoy, that wildlife could enjoy.

It just was a beautiful culmination of all that work.

And so this year I said, "You know, why don't I add my produce in the middle of all of that that I've got going on?"

And I've always, I guess put in, you know, kales or the Swiss chard.

There's lots of parsley, cilantro, all the dill, you know, those service host plants, but we also get to eat them.

This year I've had this crop of the swallowtail butterfly caterpillars on all my dill.

And I'll tell you, for years I tried to grow, for example, zucchinis and zucchinis have to be fertilized.

You know, they have to be pollinated and I could never get a single flower to set.

And then I said, "Well, probably I don't have a lot of bees, it's just grass out here.

There's nothing for anybody to come out."

And now the yard is just, I mean, I'm taking pictures of every butterfly that's out there and it's not just butterflies, there's little moths and you know, there's all kinds of different bees and different sizes and there's, you know, little flies that pollinate.

So everybody's out there and I noticed that even my veggies that I have in my little garden containers are setting as well.

When I was planting the garden, what we originally had back there was a lot of sod.

Because we live in a lot of hilly area in this part of San Antonio, we already had the terracing, you know, with the increase in the rock there.

I wasn't sure if I wanted to add flagstone or do some sort of rock path, but I said, "You know what, I'm just gonna keep it super simple.

I'm gonna leave a space to walk with just the mulch."

And then as I have cut back tree limbs and stuff has died in the frost, I kind of wanted this sort of woodland aesthetic.

And so I've lined the mulch bed with different tree limbs, you know, put in little succulents sort of along the way.

And so the bed is very organic and natural and when you go out there, you almost feel like you're walking, you know, on a nature trail.

You know, you just lift up the limb and there's all like, you know, little critters underneath it and rollie pollies and all kinds of stuff.

I tried to create little spaces within the walking path and just within the garden that have a little bit of whimsy that get my kids excited about going out there.

I have a little area in which, you know, my daughter and I, we go thrift shopping and she picks out little knickknacks and she calls it her little center, you know, where she puts her favorite little items and she goes out there and she gardens in that space moving things around and putting things to her liking.

And then, you know, my son also has a little section where he likes to sort of put flowers and arrange rocks and then I have bowling balls out there and little plates and things that are just, I pick up along the way.

The first bed that I made I made to honor my grandfather who passed away a few years ago.

And so I said, "You know what, I'd love to really make a garden."

And I have a plaque out there with his name on it.

We walk by and we think about him.

I volunteer on the PTA board at our local school and so I've been active in turning one of the gardens for the kids into one that is a pollinator-friendly garden that uses and showcases the resiliency of our native plants.

I worked on that project and then I decided that I would love to help out even just in our own community.

So I volunteered on our HOA to be able to help them design in some of the more, I guess, complicated spaces of our public or of our community properties.

I'd like to be able to go out there and feel like in a world where it feels so hard to make a difference, you're actually changing the planet just a little bit, even in your own yard.

(bright music)