To home page Classifieds Search the site Have your say in forums Chat Weather information
Marketplace  |   Services  |   Contact Us  |   Community  |   Arts & Entertainment  |   Local Guides
graphic header for Caller.com

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

Sylvia R. Longoria
Sylvia R. Longoria's column is published Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. She can be contacted at longorias@caller.com.

Thursday, May 4, 2000

Green Acres is the place to be in Rockport

Downtown garden featured in Saturday's 'Hidden Gardens' self-guided green spot tour

George Gongora/Caller-Times
Heidi Olson (from left), Jamie Wilson and Chloe Barnard from First Learning Tree in Rockport play with a living checkerboard made of compact oregano at Green Acres in downtown Rockport.
The bulk of Aransas County business is rooted in Rockport's downtown district. But just two blocks south of the county courthouse, on a half city block called Green Acres, other matters of public interest bloom.
   Here, adjacent to a two-bedroom house-turned-headquarters for the Aransas County office of the Texas Agricultural Extension Service and the Aransas/San Patricio County Master Gardeners, a demonstration garden is nurtured to illustrate everything from efficient water use to the benefits of composting. The landscaping of Green Acres began a year ago this month when the two groups moved into their new location.
   Today, it boasts eight theme gardens, among them a Children's Discovery Garden featuring eight pocket gardens, including:
  

  • Native American garden - Indian blanket flowers, native grasses and moonvines.
      
  • Asian garden - Chinese evergreen, daikon (an Asian radish) and Malabar spinach.
      
  • Mexican-American garden - cilantro, Mexican flame vines and jalapeño peppers.
       Aside from proving a gardener's dream, says Aransas County Commissioner Glenn Guillory, Green Acres is today a greenbelt for which he and fellow downtown workers are grateful.
    George Gongora/Caller-Times
    Heidi Olson shows Gavin Edgar a ladybug she found Wednesday during First Learning Tree daycare center's tour of Green Acres in downtown Rockport. Green Acres contains eight theme gardens, among them a Children's Discovery Garden.

       "In a society that is striving very hard to maintain its quality of life, given the pressures of new development, it's certainly a welcome site and a welcome project," Guillory said.
       Green Acres also features a Vegetable Variety test garden. Volunteers log information daily about Green Acres' vegetable harvest, testing the produce for yield, flavor, insect and disease resistance. The information, in turn, is made available to the public.
       "Everyone at one point or another has bought seed packets packaged elsewhere with directions saying this and this works well in this region," said Darlene Locke, Aransas County extension agent. But what seed packet information states doesn't always prove to be the case.
       "We have to consider the kind of winds we have here, the salts," Locke said. "We test that to determine what grows best in our gardens down here and it's information anyone can take advantage of."
       Such information can now be accessed through the Green Acres Web site, www.aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/aransas/index.html, launched two weeks ago. Volunteers are completing the final details for its latest theme garden, to feature plants native to the Coastal Bend. And on Saturday, Green Acres will be among a "Hidden Gardens" self-guided tour featuring six residential gardens in Rockport. The tour is from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.; the fee is $10.
      
     

     

    Scripps logo
      © 2000 Corpus Christi Caller Times, a Scripps Howard newspaper. All rights reserved.


    • [an error occurred while processing this directive]
    [an error occurred while processing this directive]
    [an error occurred while processing this directive]
    Search our site: