In today’s episode, we take a look at the brutal landscape of South Texas Consumer Slums/Heat Islands. The first half of the video is spent deconstructing the landscape of hell, while the second half of the video is spent offering viable solutions to the problems and pathologies examined here.

Here are some great alternatives to the garbage trees being planted in parking lots, commercial centers, and private residential lots in South Texas right now.

Native Street Trees for South Texas Parking Lot Hellscapes…

If only there were even the slightest inclination to use any of our South Texas native leguminous trees in the parking lot hell strips around South Texas, maybe the residents here would have some shade to protect themselves and their cars from the sun and heat. Instead, we get regionally-inappropriate live oaks that destroy the sidewalks and lousy non-native palm trees that don’t provide shade.

The native plants in a region define that place. Our relationship with those plants gives us a sense of identity. How we treat those plants in turn reflects back on the way we think of ourselves. People need to stop trying to pretend that they live somewhere else. Stop trying to emulate corny Victorian to English gardens or Spanish colonial crap. You will drain your aquifers (and your financial reserves) doing so.

In Tucson or Phoenix, people are using plants like Palo Verde and Mesquite as street trees and parking lot trees. Why can’t we do the same here? Why the insistence on corny palm trees and live oaks from places that get twice the average rainfall that we do?