How decades of seeding turned Rockport Cemetery into a wildflower destination.<\/p>\n
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas \u2014 Bluebonnets and other native blooms now blanket the historic burial ground a tradition that stretches back decades. Even with this year\u2019s drought conditions, the flowers are once again putting on a show across the cemetery, which dates back to 1888.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have winter Texans that don\u2019t leave until the bluebonnets start blooming,\u201d said Jo Ann Morgan with the Rockport Cemetery Association. \u201cThat\u2019s probably one of their last memories when they head back north, the beautiful bluebonnets in the cemetery.\u201d<\/p>\n
Morgan, 89, has lived in Rockport her entire life. Several generations of her family are buried there. She says the colorful transformation didn\u2019t happen by accident.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know exactly when the bonnets and wildflowers started,\u201d Morgan said, \u201cbut I do know that Mrs. Judy Collier and our sheriff at that time, Arly Shivers, and his wife Pinky Shivers, started seeding the cemetery in the 1980s and early 1990s. They continued to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over time, the effort stuck… literally.<\/p>\n
Liz Smith, a local master gardener, says the success of the blooms comes down to geography.<\/p>\n
\u201cActually, we have different varieties across Texas that are adapted to the soils and climate and rain conditions,\u201d Smith explained. \u201cThis is in a sandy prairie.\u201d<\/p>\n
That sandy prairie soil helps native wildflowers thrive, even during drier years.<\/p>\n
Visitors hoping to catch peak bloom still have a short window. Morgan says the association intentionally holds off on mowing until the flowers go to seed, a strategy that keeps the color coming back year after year.<\/p>\n
For now, in the month of March, Rockport Cemetery remains both a place of reflection and a field of blue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How decades of seeding turned Rockport Cemetery into a wildflower destination. CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas \u2014 Bluebonnets and other…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":187882,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[155,157,156],"class_list":["post-187881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi","tag-corpus-christi-headlines","tag-corpus-christi-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187881\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}