My daughter and family just moved to a new house in Del Rio, Texas. As you can imagine, it's quite different from the Pacific Northwest in terms of landscaping. We would like to be able to point them to helpful people/organizations in their area. May daughter already has a couple of Dale Groom books. Other than that, they can look around their neighborhood. But surely there are more helpful people/places than that. They have literally to pick through essentially solid rock for each plant, having to rent an auger to drill holes to put up a fence, and apparently anything that needs real planting is not going to be easy. Thoughts anyone?
Bill
west texas anybody?
There is an excellent book called Gardening in Difficult Soils, by Scott Ogden, that has excellent plant suggestions for gardening in caliche, which is what I expect the rock is you're talking about. Also, Native Texas Plants, by Wasowski and Wasowski, gives details on natives that are good, with plans set out for different areas of Texas, and lots of detail on what would be good where in Texas.
I'm sure there is a county extension office in Del Rio, which can offer lots of information about plants for the area. There may be a master gardener program available through the extension office; if so, there are probably members available to answer questions and assist gardeners. The Soil Conservation Service will have information on the soils in the area.
The Native Plant Society of Texas, www.npsot.org, may have a chapter close to Del Rio.
Good luck. There's a big climate difference there.