Hello Wildflowers!

While Preston Hollow residents take advantage of temperatures falling below triple digits, Northaven Trail is witnessing a steady increase in bikers, joggers, and dog-walkers. The bountiful blooms that typically appear along the recreational trail in the springtime, now welcome a colorful reemergence of blossoms to the fall season.

This isn’t, however, by coincidence.

While wildflowers along the trail may look like a byproduct of seeds haphazardly tossed along its path, the results are part of a strategic backdrop of planning. To create the eye-catching color and diversity of a wildflower meadow, simply throwing out seeds and leaving the area unprotected does not produce its bountiful results. Natural meadows evolve over years as flora adapts to environmental conditions and develops intricate associations among plants, animals, and microorganisms.

For those of us who live near and use the trail often, the evolution of the wildflower meadows along the trail has been a gratifying process, realized through careful planning. For months, neighbors of the trail (and their pooches) heeded signage and avoided roped off areas, allowing the growing plants to spread while avoiding seedlings being prematurely trampled.

The volunteer organization, Friends of the Northaven Trail, that supports the trail’s maintenance and beautification efforts, reported that the beauty of wildflowers is not the sole benefit of nature’s nod to the area. Saving water, sequestering carbon, and reducing mowing resources, helps keep the associated costs and environmental footprint low, and also benefits the bees, butterflies, small mammals, and birds who call the area home. With increasing asphalt (concrete jungles) being added to our communities, the trail has become a haven to promote biodiversity for green space and species threatened with extinction due to the lack of native flora they need for survival.

According to Friends of Northaven Trail, the wildflower seeds planted along the trail were purchased in Texas and are native to the ecoregion. The seeds consist of a broad range of species, including Blackland Prairie and Bee Happy Mix.

The St. Mark’s School of Texas Gardening Club helped beautify a popular stretch of the trail. Community members are invited to help maintain the pollinator wildflower meadows. Friends of Northaven Trail is a 100% volunteer-run organization that requires community support to function.