- JEFF: We didn't really know what we were doing.
The goal wasn't necessarily to create habitat.
[bright music]
We bought the property
because we wanted a place to ride our bikes.
As we started building,
we started learning about the native species.
We didn't create it.
It was here before we were here,
but we brought it back.
[bright music]
- AMY: We're like in a looking glass of nature.
All we have to do is look out the window
and it's nothing but butterflies and bees.
It's incredible.
- I'm Jeff Thompson.
- I'm Amy Thompson.
- We are west of Burton at Coyote Run.
[bright music]
- This all started when we had our AgriLife agent come out.
We just wanted to do, like, plant identification
to figure out what we had out here.
And he said these really foreign weird words to us,
which was, "You have a post oak savannah."
I just said, "Wow.
What's a post oak savannah?
Never heard that before."
We thought, "This is so cool.
Why don't we, like, try to bring it back to some semblance
of what a post oak savannah would be?"
- JEFF: When we tore all the trees out,
and we smooth everything off,
and almost instantly, the native seed bank came up
and we were just amazed at all of the things that were here.
[bright music]
- AMY: This is definitely my happy place.
- JEFF: Her line is, "I'm in heaven."
It's her line as she's walking through
and seeing everything.
- AMY: Look at this one.
This is our yard.
Most everybody we know, even out in the country,
they have St. Augustine grass yards.
Most people are taken aback
by the house being surrounded by wildflowers.
- JEFF: Or tall grass.
- AMY: And tall grass. - JEFF: Everybody feels like,
manicure right around the house.
[bright music]
- AMY: I have noticed
that the more our friends come out here
and they observe the insects,
they observe the wild bees.
It starts gelling for them.
They start getting it,
and they start to understand
that you don't have to even have a short-mowed grass
all around the perimeter of your house.
[birds chirping]
- JEFF: You don't want everything to bloom at once
and then go away
or there's no food for the foragers.
The idea is to have some come on early
and some come on late,
and it just goes all the way through the season.
- AMY: We definitely leave sandy areas open.
There's always somewhere
where the ground nesting bees can nest.
We have learned that, you know,
you can put blocks of wood up and the mason bees,
you know, you drill holes
and we've got several snags around here
that we have purposely left up
for fireflies and for butterflies
and for frogs,
and, you know, for everybody.
[bright music]
- JEFF: We do shred it once a year
and it's usually January and February.
And that was always a battle.
As soon as the flowers were gone,
I wanted to go ahead and mow it down.
And what I learned is that there are insects
and then birds that will use that tall grass
all the way until February,
maybe even March.
[bright music]
- AMY: We do go out and assess insect activity
and make sure that we time it
so that it's the most dormant time of the year.
- JEFF: It's incredible when we mow
and everything's brown on top.
We shred it to about six inches tall
and everything's green underneath.
And it just takes off as soon as we shred.
Problem is, when they have these mowers
and they come from your neighbor's property,
they pick up all the seed and deposit it on our place.
Amy has seen mowers in the neighborhood,
and she'll go talk to the mowing crew and tell them,
"Don't mow in front of my house.
Please don't mow in front of my house.
I'm putting signs up."
It's frustrating to do the restoration
and then see them mow it.
And next thing you know,
you have Johnson grass and Bahia coming up in your natives.
And those introduced species
will choke out all of the natives in a heartbeat.
If you walk along that easement along the driveway,
you'll see all the same insects that you see back here.
There's no need to cut it all down.
We eventually mow it
and we don't let the trees grow out to the street.
We're maintaining it.
It just looks a little different than everybody else's.
[gentle music]
- Something that I had never
really even thought about before
is the competition between European honeybees
and native bees.
We started the process of regaining agricultural exemption
on this property by being bee farmers.
So, we're apiarists.
We have several bee colonies.
We were up to 12 because that was what was required
to get your agricultural exemption.
When we reached our agricultural exemption,
we decided to transition to a wildlife exemption
because we felt like having 12 bee boxes
for European honeybees
was too much pressure for the native bees on the land.
And we wanted to create more of a balance.
So, we're actually down to four.
It's not horrible to have European honeybees,
but too many is a problem.
We'd like to see the stocking rates for bees less
and be able to support the native vegetation more
and support the native wildlife more
and all of the native pollinators.
[bright music]
- JEFF: There's not a playbook that says do this on this day
and everything will be beautiful.
This has been a learning experience.
We plant all kinds of stuff.
Some stuff comes up, some doesn't.
Two years later,
what we planted all of a sudden does come up.
- AMY: We've simply learned to assist Mother Nature
in what Mother Nature does best,
which is heal and regenerate
and create wildlife habitat.
We're very passionate about it
and we love doing this.
We find that it is our way of giving back to the world.
[bright music]