The objective of Earth-Kind® is to combine the best of organic and traditional gardening and landscaping principles to create a horticultural system based on real world effectiveness and environmental responsibility.

Earth-Kind® gardening encourages four important practices. Select each link to find out more:

1. Landscape water conservation
2. Reduction of fertilizer and pesticide use
3. Landscaping for energy conservation
4. Reduction of landscape waste entering landfills

Individuals using Earth-Kind® principles and practices can create beautiful, easy-care landscapes while conserving and protecting natural resources and the environment.

The Earth-Kind® Plant Selector Database, part of the Texas Urban Landscape Guide, can be an extremely useful tool for this difficult task.  This searchable database provides users with the opportunity to select plant materials based on factors such as height, width, flower color, sun or shade, bloom period, leaf character, as well as several other matching criteria.

In 2011, a group of Master Gardeners recognized the potential of an uncultivated but highly visible site near the path from the parking lot at Texas Discovery Gardens (TDG) and proposed the creation of a new garden, eventually named “The Master Gardener’s Garden.”

Our goal for this garden is to demonstrate that attractive landscapes can be created using native and well-adapted plants and employing Earth-Kind® principles. With the support of several donors and a dedicated group of Master Gardeners, a design was created, the virgin ground was tilled, and a garden came to be, filled with perennials, and maintained without the use of pesticides or herbicides, per TDG policy. The video and public education program won an award in 2018.

As the garden matured, it became clear that there was much the public could learn from the approach and practices employed in developing it. Working from garden plans, plant lists, and photographs, a Master Gardener volunteer developed a public education program that demonstrated how the sustainable horticultural practices used in The Master Gardener’s Garden could be applied in the home garden.

The program, “From the Ground Up: Lessons from the Master Gardener’s Garden that You Can Use at Home,” was originally envisioned as a scripted slide show that could be presented at Texas Discovery Gardens by a Master Gardener.

As the public education program came together, TDG staff suggested that, if the slide presentation could be converted to video with a voice-over, they would play it on a regular daily schedule on the flat-screen monitor in TDG’s Gallery area adjacent to the main entrance. Thanks to generous donations from Master Gardeners and other supporters, the conversion was made, allowing us to reach the approximately 100,000 visitors who come to the Discovery Gardens each year.

Enter “garden” as the password