Creativity helps a garden in the heat

BASTROP, Texas (KXAN) - "I am blessed to be the owner. Although I prefer the title of creative director," said Deena Spellman as she waits for some promising rain clouds to wash over her garden center just east of Bastrop.

Spellman has had to be very creative in making sure her gardening business didn't burn up in the blazing Texas sun.

"We are the onion of agriculture as you must be in Texas to survive. We are an organic nursery. We are also a "pick-your-own farm. We are also licensed irrigators. Licensed backflow inspectors. Licensed landscape designers and installers," she said of her credentials.

Those many "onion layers" show in her multi-faceted business. She said despite her being one with Mother Nature, being 100-percent-pesticide-free and completely natural for the last 13 years has been difficult, but worth it.

"This is our Firebush," she said pointing to a spikey red and orange flowering plant. "And what's so important about this is that it feeds our hummingbirds. And as you have reported on the bees, the hummingbirds and the birds themselves are in severe stress, as well," she said.

She uses her gardens as community-wide teaching tools. And the biggest tool in her shed was born and raised in hot Texas sun.

"As a teaching nursery we have chosen to represent the native plant community -- the native flora community. And we teach that those plants that are native to our area are far more tolerant of the extreme conditions," she said.

Sure there is a physical drought going on and Spellman does, of course, talk about that, but one thing that she does try to do is also alleviate a different kind of drought. A drought of the mind.

"...And it teaches me the lesson that not all of life is a monetary thing. A lot of life is the richness and content of one's life. And this provides me a richness of content -- not necessarily a richness of money," she said.

"I was privileged enough to have an Indian couple from Round Rock tell me their Indian friends had told them I was the only lady around who knew about Indian herbs and to come see me. And I could get them the herbs they needed and teach them how to grow them in Texas," Spellman reflects. "It may not make the mortgage payment that day, but that's what I'm talking about: content of life."