On June 11, I posted here about the gradual decline of Austin’s beautiful Zilker Botanical Gardens and its Hartman Prehistoric Garden . (Please take a look if you didn’t read it already.) Craig Nazor, Zilker Gardens volunteer extraordinare, was quoted in a Statesman article about the problem, and I was shocked to read that visitors are not only trampling some plants and carving up others but out-and-out stealing them. To make matters worse, the city, in its wisdom, has cut staffing and the maintenance budget for the gardens, with the result that waterfalls are drying up, vandals are tearing things up, and the gardens are falling into disrepair, despite the valiant efforts of many volunteers.

Craig Nazor just posted a comment on my June 11 post here at Digging, urging those of us who love the gardens to write Austin City Council to ask for more funding. I’m reprinting his comment below:

I enjoyed your postings, and I want to thank you for the kind comments about the Hartman Prehistoric Garden (HPG). I was the horticultural consultant for that garden – I researched, designed, procured, and executed the installation of the plantings there. When that garden was opened on April 1, 2002, the Austin Parks and Recreation Department (PARD) had promised the Hartman Foundation, the underwriters and major donors to the project, a full-time gardener for the garden, but none was hired. I have been volunteering at least 10 hours a week since then in the HPG to keep the plants and ponds looking good and the garden growing.

Warren Struss, the PARD director, has told me that the reason more money is not spent at Zilker Botanical Gardens (ZBG) is because the money is needed for recreation centers and swimming pools. There are foundations waiting to help, but after budget cuts that have compromised proper maintenance, these foundations are hesitant to get involved without some kind of change in management, so things are at an impass. The best way you can help is to write to the Austin City Council and tell them that you would like to see more support for ZBG. At this point, if the City Council doesn’t get involved, I’m afraid ZBG will remain a garden in danger. That breaks my heart, too.

Comment by Craig Nazor—June 25, 2006 @ 9:53 pm

Craig, thanks for writing. I will write to the Austin City Council this week. Thanks also for all you’ve done for Zilker Gardens. My family has enjoyed Hartman Prehistoric Garden since day one, and it’s always our first stop when we visit Zilker Gardens. (The Japanese garden is second.)

On recent visits, I’d noticed the bare areas where visitors had trod in the plants and the trees whose trunks had been carved with people’s initials. I’d seen that the grand waterfall in HPG was flowing at half-stream, and I’d wondered aloud why the steam machine in the dinosaur garden was no longer working (my kids loved that, but we haven’t seen it in operation since the garden first opened). But I hadn’t put it all together until I read that Statesman article.

Austin’s climate may not be the most hospitable to gardens or gardeners, but we love ’em anyway. Zilker Gardens is one of Austin’s best public spaces. I hope our city won’t give up on it.