Local garden garnering Austin attention for innovativeness

By Kyle Mooty

LPR Editor

Donna Daniels began gardening several years ago after watching shows on the internet and television. Today, her love of gardening benefits everyone from her family to insects and even birds in the area.

Daniels and her husband, Len Gabbay, have reinvigorated their Prairie Lea Street home’s gardens to what is now a permaculture food forest, which has garnered the attention of not only insects and others, but also Austin television show Central Texas Gardener, which recently featured their outside handiwork.

Donna and Len purchased the Lockhart home in 2019. It had four raised garden beds, but they took it to a new level.

“It’s what we call a weigh station for the butterflies and the bees and the pollinators,” Gabbay said. “We definitely notice the increase in activity that’s back there. That’s very special.”

The varieties of items grown both in the raised beds, vines, fruit trees and even the yard by Donna and Len include sweet potatoes, asparagus, eggplant, Kajari melons, lettuces, beets, carrots, parsnips, broccoli, cauliflower, onions, mushrooms, celery, grapes, beans, blackberries, elderberries, peaches, plums, persimmons, culinary herbs, native grasses and native flowers.

“I’m 100 percent organic,” Daniel said. “My hands are my best organic gardening tools. I don’t suggest other people do this, but a lot of times I’ll leave the caterpillars on because the birds need to be fed. The baby birds need worms. This is part of the cycle, and I enjoy feeding them. I share with them.”

Daniels said she began watching Roots in Refuge videos on YouTube, watching it for two years as she and Gabbay began putting flowers and vegetables into the raised beds.

“And we would watch Central Texas Gardener every Saturday,” Daniels said. “If you do watch people online, it’s good to have people in the same climate you’re in.”

Daniels has since joined the Share the Joy Plant Friends of Caldwell County, which has many gardeners she said have been doing so for decades.

Daniels said the Share the Joy Plant Friends have a plant swap once a month if the weather is nice, and Donna and Len once held one their backyard. People can bring seeds, plants or just themselves and listen to knowledge of gardening.

“You can swap plants, there’s a lady who sells some stuff, and some people just give stuff away,” Daniel said. “I love gardeners because they love to share and they love to share their knowledge. There are so many people in town and in Caldwell County doing great and creative things.”

The main goal of the projects, Daniels said, was to create beauty and joy with the food forest and to share with others.

“It’s not just for food,” Daniels said. “I found out early on that I like to have a lot of biodiversity in the yard for the insect population and the birds and also the humans. I really do love gardening for the pollinators.

“We created the new garden along the fence in the backyard so that the people that walk along Live Oak have something to look at that’s pretty. We did that project slowly so that it could inspire someone to see how we did it so that they can do it too.”

Taelor Monroe, owner and co-director of the Austin Permaculture Guild,  was so impressed with what Donna and Len had done with the gardens and the food forest that she returned to do a video for the web site at www.centraltexasgardener.org.

The couple use twigs, branches, eaves and pretty much anything they can find for their Hugelkultur beds. Hugelkultur is a German word meaning mound culture where beds are filled with topsoil and organic materials such as what Donna and Len have gathered.

“The cool thing about it is it captures a lot of rainwater on the property,” Daniels said. “They’re not drought-free, but they’re drought-tolerant. All those dead logs and debris you have under there act like a sponge and soak up water, so they retain water well.”

Gabbay said his wife tries to make the family meals from 60 to 90 percent out of the garden.

“You can eat dandelion greens out of your yard,” Daniels said. “They taste great and make tea, too.”

Last year, Donna and Len put several of their excess produce in a box in front of their house with a chair from there front porch. Their intent was for anyone to grab what they needed, writing “free” on the sign. Someone took it at its full meaning and took everything, including the chair. Daniels has since found other ways in which to give the food away.

Gabbay said the insects benefit greatly from the gardens.

“You can grow broccoli for people, and you can also grow broccoli for the cabbage leapers,” Gabbay said.

The artichoke is the symbol for Donna and Len. It symbolizes peace, hope and prosperity.

Donna and Len also run the adjoining Prairie Lea Carriage House as an Airbnb.

“One of the nice things is we get guests now from all over the world coming in and they don’t expect to see the kind of beauty that is part of their experience when they stay with us,” Gabbay said. “We get a lot of really great responses and reactions. A fellow from New York, it was their first time ever in Texas, and his reaction to what was back there was priceless. I think he was expecting tumbleweeds and saloon doors. He got a blast of what can happen if you put a little love into your garden.”

Carriage House guests have also come from as far away as Germany and Canada.