Hello from Houston, I am new and would like to learn more on gardening

That's really useful information, I had not considered the possibility of droughts as much in my research but I will surely look into it now. I did, however, have a lecture on water a couple of weeks ago. From the lecture I drew that it is important to conserve as much water as possible for many different reasons. I also learned how even rain water is not as clean as I expected which is very unfortunate. I'm looking into different information on what people are growing here in the U.S. right now. What are the common plants to grow now? I know you mentioned the natives but are you growing the most of now? I am also interested in knowing the reasons why those are planted, I think knowing why those plants are growing will help to foresee trends.

I do not have much information right now but I will surely let you know if come across something that could help you. I am still pretty new myself to the whole scene, how long have you been gardening?

 

Often. It depends on the climate, really. Where I live we have periods where dams are overflowing and we need to use water, others where we are drought stricken. In some biomes water is not a limiting factor.

Landscape architecture, horticulture and arboriculture are now commonly studied at technical colleges, and that's influencing gardening more and more. Gardeners used to grow what their mothers grew. Now they have information from their contractors and laborers that has been filtered down from academia: environmental science, natural resources as well as hort disciplines.

So, gardeners are looking at gardening with a view to such things as restrict invasive plants and feed native fauna. Planting natives does both, usually. There are many other influences from the same sources; for example the drought tolerance theme we have discussed.

There's also an opposite movement. Big box stores are taking over from boutique nurseries, to some extent. Here, our largest hardware super store even sells environmental weeds (I'm going to try to stop that). They have less variety and sell whatever people think is pretty.

Of course, food production is another reason for gardening and is another subject again. Offhand, I can add there is a movement for heritage (open pollinating) seeds instead of hybrids marketed by seed companies as the latter can't be propogated by seed. There are gardeners here better qualified to add to that.

I'm in Australia so these are just my observations where I live. Perhaps some US members can tell you if the same trends are occurring there.

 

Hello Arturo
Welcome to GardenStew from southern Ontario!