Texas Women’s University Volunteers came out to help the Westbury Community Garden for our monthly workday on June 25. This was their first visit here. They helped weed and mulch the front Butterfly Beds to help our native pollinator plants survive the long period of high temperatures and drought. We saw Pipevine Caterpillars, native bees […]
Author Archive | Kat Elder
Workday Super Garden Leaders & Members
In breezy 80 degree temps, quickly moving to mid 90’s, four garden leaders worked for 7 hours and were by far the last remaining gardeners working. (L-R, Wayne Slaikeu, President, Kat Elder, Specialty Gardens Chairman, Don Finley, new gardener and exemplary volunteer and Debbie Gordon, Vice President (not pictured). Debbie was guiding the Scout Troop […]
Ohio State Alumni Club Earth Day
We were SO delighted to have the Ohio State Alumni Club of Houston at the WCG on our big Earth Day Workday for the first time! This enthusiastic, hard working, friendly and fun group helped Kat Elder, Shelly and Roy Johnson with heavy weeding, pruning and mulching in the front Butterfly Beds in prep for […]
Kinkaid High School Volunteers
The Kinkaid High School group came to work with Kat Elder in the WCG Butterfly Beds, starting off the “April Keep America Beautiful” month. The freshmen through seniors were a fantastic group of “Weed Slayers & Landscape Helpers”, working amongst the flowering Texas Bluebonnets and emerging spring wildflowers and Native plants. Betina Wolfowicz, WCG Volunteer […]
Workday in the North 40 Orchard 2/26/22
The Teach For America Volunteer Group joined our WCG members in preparing the orchard beds for planting replacement fruit trees at the March, 2022, workday. The remaining roots of the frozen trees from 2/15/2021 Winter Storm Uri were removed, weeds were removed, most of the bed’s diameters were extended, a grass barrier was installed and […]
Beneficial Parasitic Wasps Killing Aphids
Gardeners, please be on the lookout for and protect these small black parasitic wasps and leave the aphids alone to incubate more wasps! The wasps will take care of the aphids and some other garden pests for us. What they don’t get to, the Lady Bug Beetle larvae (the tiny “alligators with many legs”) will […]
The Secret Life of Purple Martins
The Purple Martin Conservation Association’s Pennsylvania webcam gives our WCG Purple Martin Landlord Team and our gardeners a window into what happens in our four WCG Purple Martin (PM) houses as well. These amazing, native, migrating American birds that we provide for in a small way, reward us with spring to late summer songs. We […]
Ditch the Bug Zappers, Try This Instead
We gardeners are all plagued to a varying extent by blood sucking, disease-spreading, itchy Mosquitoes in the Houston area. Currently they’re not especially annoying at WCG until dusk. But this will likely change with heavy rains & absent lovely summer breezes. I’ve read that rubbing native American Beautyberry leaves on your skin is a natural […]
Village School Volunteers
On the afternoon of Saturday, March 27, six Village School High School volunteers, led by Nicholas Z, came to help Kat at Westbury Community Garden. Together, the group helped plant additional pollinator plants and transplanted plants into the new apiary pollinator bed along the north fence laid the outside bed boundary spread compost mulch around […]
Work Day, March 13, 2021
Nicholas Zarabas arranged for 4 additional of his high school friends from Village School & School of the Woods to volunteer at WCG on Saturday, 3-13-21 afternoon. They helped me immensely with final preparation of the new Apiary Pollinator Bed readied for planting, some weeding & pruning in the front Butterfly Beds & the B1 […]