THE CULTIVATED GARDEN
MERCER BOTANIC GARDENS and the Strength of Native Plants
ABOVE Trails emerge from the silt-swept landscape after months of shoveling and pressurewashing at Mercer Botanic Gardens. PREVIOUS SPREAD The sun still shines on Buffalo Bayou Park in downtown Houston.
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TH E R E ’ S A N E W F E ATU R E AT M E RCE R
Botanic Gardens in Humble, Texas (on the northeast side of Houston’s metro area). It’s called Silt Mountain — unofficially. The result of a massive post–Hurricane Harvey cleanup effort, it is the gardens’ deposition spot for all the silt and mud scraped from their pathways. It looks like the ash pile from a Bunyanesque charcoal grill: a hulking gray scab on the land, a mound that, figuratively, is healing around the edges but still reminds its owner of pain. Or you’d think so. But Greenhouse Manager Jacob Martin smiles as he recounts running up the dusky pile with other garden staff to plant flags on top. “We had to make fun with some of this stuff,” he says. “This stuff” refers to months of labor and recovery from seemingly endless damages, something Houston residents and businesses
have been dealing with since late August 2017. Mercer — a free botanic garden in Harris County Precinct 4 — was still closed six months after the hurricane but partially reopened in conjunction with March Mart, their spring plant sale. Realistically, though, Martin thinks it’ll be another year for the whole site to be back to something resembling “normal.” Mercer’s front gardens were submerged under 8 feet of water, thanks in large part to its location along Cypress Creek. As a botanic garden with a nursery, one of Mercer’s main cleanup issues was the fact that countless plants floated out of their nursery and into the woods behind the gardens. There were (and still are) pots everywhere: in trees, on the tops of fences, scattered across the ground. Martin points out a tiny, potted Texas ebony (Ebenopsis ebano) cradled in the branches of a full-grown Texas