Shaping Place

Water Conservation & Landscaping for the Wimberley Village Library

Hays County Master Naturalist Dell J. Hood

In summer of 2024, Wimberley Village Library invited the community into a high, bright, airy new space. Residents of this central Texas Hill Country town of about 3,000 folks had waited. Young families, retired folks from Austin and Houston, professors from the university down the road, ranchers, students, teachers and toddlers had all checked out a book here, enjoyed a book club here, met friends. We’d watched the two years of site prep and construction. This addition’s interior dramatically expands the original ranch-style building.

But look, too, how the surrounding land has been transformed! A dry creek now eddies around the site, its banks begging for wildflowers. If this strong community has its way, follows the design plan, musters the volunteers, bluebonnets will be here next spring—and then some!

Planning for this expansion of the library began in 2016, and from the start, everyone involved—the board of trustees, the library director, the building committee, and the community at large—has been committed to making the library an example of planning and construction that is energy efficient and water wise. When the building committee, started the design process in 2018, we asked for a design that includes rainwater harvesting off the new building and collection of condensation water from air conditioning units to provide water for landscaping and flushing toilets. We reduced the need for landscape irrigation by siting the building so that the fewest number of native trees would be removed, and we agreed to follow the guidelines and practices of the One Water initiative established by the Meadows Center for Water and the Environment at Texas State University in San Marcos, which specify the most efficient use of water and its reuse when possible.

We received a master design plan from a San Antonio firm early in 2019, which we revised substantially over the next two years. In March 2021 we hired another San Antonio architectural firm, LPA Inc., for final plans. As these plans were being prepared, we learned that the slope from the highest point of the property down toward the southwest edge along FM 2325 required us to provide for a stormwater management element as part of the final plan. This took the form of the rock-filled channel (folks are calling it “the dry creek”) that runs between the old and new buildings and is designed to provide rapid drainage of runoff from the new parking area. This requirement was not part of our initial landscape planning, but we saw it as an opportunity to create a small rain garden of one or more pools that would hold water for a while and could feature interesting aquatic plants. Another requirement we did not foresee or plan for was the need for a 25,000-gallon tank for water to feed the fire suppression sprinkler system in both buildings; when the original building was built, it did not include a sprinkler system.

As we coped with these two major complications—runoff management and water storage—Wimberley entered what almost certainly will be an extended period of longer dry spells and reduced rainfall.

The original design contract had included a landscape plan with a list of plants, some of which are not native to North America but often used in commercial landscaping, as well as a lush rain garden plant selection. Restrictions on outdoor water use—NO outdoor watering except drip irrigation!—were imposed just as our construction began and required us to delay start of the landscape work, reduce its scope, eliminate the rain garden design, and revise the plant selection.

The Wimberley Village Library 2023 Extension's landscape design is by Lauren Dean Colunga, Landscape Architecture Coordinator with LPA in San Antonio, Texas. The plant list was modified by the Library’s Dell Hood and Dennis Lee to use only native plants.

The original library building was designed to look like a Hill Country ranch house. In keeping with that style and to meet our commitment to reducing water use, I revised the original plant list. A practical modern library design, with bright natural light and water recovery, would now be planted with heat and drought tolerant all-native plants—Texas natives found in the Hill Country. In place of sprinklers, we installed our own drip irrigation system using bubblers and soaker hoses in the area around the entrance to the new building and parking area.

The plants we are now buying include the following; one or more other native forbs may be added—maybe those spring wildflowers?

We are buying these plants from Wimberley Gardens, whose wholesale supplier is Native Texas Nursery in Austin. We are planning for the plants to arrive in the first two weeks of October, when we hope we can count on autumnal rains. We will have some if not all the holes for the 5-gallon plants dug in advance, and possibly those for the smaller size as well. Volunteers are needed to put plants in the ground on the day(s) we schedule. Occasional maintenance will be scheduled on an ongoing basis.

Hays County Master Naturalists Dell and Gerin Hood promote the **Wimberley Village Library Nature Garden - Project 1307** at the HCMN’s 2024 Projects Fair in San Marcos, Texas. Photo courtesy Mimi Cavender

The blank canvas is in place, the design looks great. It will be important to recruit sustained numbers of volunteers to plant and then to maintain a native landscape in a warming climate. Even these hardy natives will need some weeding and seasonal grooming. Sherri Colca is Project Coordinator of the Hays County Chapter of Texas Master Naturalist™ Wimberley Village Library Nature Garden Project in cooperation with similar volunteers from the Native Plant Society of Texas and Hays County Master Gardeners. (Link in and join one of us!)

Adding the runoff channel and the fire suppression system for two buildings strained our finances to the extent that we have had to reduce the rooftop rainwater collection system to two 3,000-gallon tanks on the east side of the new children’s room. Increasing rainwater storage will remain a goal of the library board. We hope public and business support will sustain the ambitious scope of this new showcase project for Wimberley and Hays County.

As if by intention and with a warming climate at our backs, our revised landscape engineering plan has positioned Wimberley Village Library to be a leader, a model, a laboratory for best practices as Texas moves into a time of water shortage. We’re learning to manage water without losing the beauty, the historic character, of a place with this Hill Country’s heart.

See the Wimberley Village Library Expansion and Renovation Project here.

And watch the video here.

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