- Last summer, this was all, all of it, was Bermuda.

Into the spring and into the summer, I took up all of Bermuda.

This is a shade mix of grasses.

You've got windmill grass, you've got some buffalo grass, you've got some gramas.

Hello, my name is Laura O'Toole and my husband Brian and I bought this property in 2015, and the reason we bought it is because we are on the edge of this wild area and we just think it's beautiful.

We love being close to nature.

The people who had lived before here planted St. Augustine and Bermuda and then they had a bunch of fruit trees, nothing that should be here.

And so I have spent the last seven years now trying to turn this back into what it would have been had they left it wild, except that it needs to be a little curated, because we do have an HOA.

So I would say that I want it to look as wild as possible, as to have as many native plants as possible, and in particular, native grasses, and still have it pleasing enough to the eye that the homeowner's association will be happy with it.

And so far they're thrilled.

Because we're on a slope, we get some rainwater coming down.

And so we created walkways.

And then this is a kind of dam break, where if the water comes down, it will be stopped and then it will be absorbed into the ground.

My personal journey started when I began to learn about native grasses and native forbs at our place in Menard.

We have a little ranch in Menard.

And so I said I started studying how to renew the grasslands that had all been grazed down at our place by sheep and goats.

And, once we got rid of the livestock that the owners before had, some of the native grasses started coming back, but a lot of the invasives also came back.

And so I began to learn a lot about native grasses in Texas.

Another thing that our previous owners had planted is tons and tons of Asian jasmine.

I mean, the Asian jasmine was everywhere.

It was half of the front yard.

It was all where the pond is.

And once I got rid of the Asian jasmine, I began to experiment with native grasses.

And I started with big muhly, switchgrass, Gulf Coast muhly and big bluestem.

I knew that little bluestem grew really well because it's all in the back there where we hike, but I didn't know if the other grasses would grow.

And they did, amazingly so, and they were beautiful.

And so I began to expand the native grasses around the yard as I ripped up the invasives and the non-natives.

I have a lot of the lawn sedge that I've planted.

Another favorite of mine for the shady areas is the inland sea oats.

I think are just beautiful.

I have some non-natives because they, you know, they're pretty.

What made me fall in love with grasses in the first place is probably the journey that I started taking in Menard, you know, trying to figure out how to regenerate our grasses.

And I started studying Bamberger Ranch and David Bamberger's place, and that was very inspiring.

And then I'd walk around our place and go, "Oh, my gosh, we have so much work to do."

And now we're kind of in the process of having professionals help us with that.

But we also ride bikes a lot out there.

The best way to learn about grasses is on road sides, side roads or right of ways.

I wasn't really a gardener.

My best friend is a gardener, and she has beautiful vegetable gardens, but she's a great cook, and so that was kind of her hook.

My other good friend had beautiful gardens because she loved beautiful flowers, and that was her hook.

I needed a hook.

and it couldn't just be grasses, you know?

So my hook became what do grasses do for the landscape and for nature?

And if you take out the non-native grasses and put native grasses back, what you notice is worms come back and beetles are back and flying things are back, and, you know, then you start paying attention to host plants.

The pond project.

I'd always wanted a pond.

And my husband promised me a pond for our 30th wedding anniversary, which is coming up.

Eric Arntson and his wife Ana showed up and he is a very experienced pond builder.

And so we sort of got to talking about his idea and his views of ponds.

And he says, "I've kind of got this vision of Jacob's Well, you know, to where that's sort of my muse."

And I was like, "Oh, that'd be great."

The only advice I gave, I said, "I want it to look like it's always been here."

And he said, "Okay."

When he finished, it really did.

It really did.

He said this is a habitat.

He said this is a biological habitat.

And what what will happen is, you know, we have these, they're called biofalls at the top and it will circulate the water, you know, through the pond.

And over time, it will grow algae and plants, and those are your natural filtration.

I asked him, I said, "Well, can my dog get in there?"

And he goes, "Oh yeah, your dog can get in there.

You can get in there."

It's been the most fun I've had and the best addition to this yard, way, way more than I could have anticipated.

Another great mom and pop shop, Heartland Sprinklers, came and figured out how to do a high pressure pump system out of the tank, because I said, "I want to be able to irrigate with cistern water out of my cistern."

One of the things I've been trying to do is encourage my neighbors to have pollinator gardens in their yard.

And when I was talking to my friend about it, who is familiar with Doug Tallamy, she said, "Have you heard of Doug Tallamy's Homegrown National Park?"

His concept is if everyone dedicated a portion of their yard to natural habitat, we could recreate on private property essentially a highway for migrating pollinators.

Once I put the sign in the front yard, that I got from Doug Tallamy's Homegrown National Park, people started coming over and asking me what it was, and that gave me an opportunity to explain to my neighbors what I've been doing all this time, you know, ripping up grasses and putting, you know, habitat in my front yard.

And they were like, "Oh, that's such a great idea, you know?"

And it kind of, it's sort of a light bulb effect, you know?

If everybody had just a patch in our neighborhood, on our street, everybody could have bunches of butterflies and bees and critters to look at.

It is so much fun when you take that approach.

It is so much more fulfilling.

It was so therapeutic for me to rip up all these non-native grasses and the invasive plants and to feel like I'm part of the solution, inviting wildlife in rather than trying to keep them out.

We need to learn to live alongside wildlife, and it can be messy.

It can look messy at times.

It doesn't look like a golf course, but I think it's prettier that way.

You know, it's just changing the way you think about it, so.

And I live in a neighborhood with an HOA, and the HOA president was walking by my yard the other day and just loved it, you know, so, it can be done.

(bright music)