Julia Guerrero EDINBURG – April is here and Spring has finally sprung, bringing with it National Garden Month; a time to celebrate the joys and benefits of gardening.
Jennifer Wilson, owner of Harlingen’s Wild August Nursery & Flower Farm, started gardening at the flower farm in 2005 after taking a career change to specialize in heirloom roses and native plants.
“We started selling the flowers directly off the farm to people and inviting people to come out and get their own flowers straight form us,” Wilson said. “And then the flower market grew into vendors being here. And so now It’s a full farmer’s market. We’ve got between 30 to 50 vendors here and we’ve been doing that since 2017.”
Wilson said gardening in the Valley can be tricky because the weather is warm throughout the year.
“I would say get in touch with gardeners that have been doing it because the Valley, especially our climate down here, is so unique even to Texas,” Wilson said. “Our nights are warmer, our days are so hot, and our summers last longer.”
Apolonio Flores, event coordinator for the Environmental Awareness Club, said the EAC is the first to bring the Rewild Your Campus Initiative to our area.
The initiative’s goal is to reintroduce native and wild plants to campuses while removing the pesticides and insecticides.
Flores said a lot of the plants we see now in the Valley are not native, but gardening can help bring back some of the authentic landscape.
“As for gardening with native plants and native wildscapes, it helps to bring back pollinators and bring back all these beneficial insects and other critters back into your environment,” Flores said. “Because of course it supports, you know it’s a biodiversity here.”
For more information on the flower farm, visit its website www.wildaugust.com or for information on other gardening resources contact the Environmental Awareness Club on Instagram – @eac_rgv.
