Travel Story--Laura W. Bush Native Texas Park, Dallas, Texas

Visiting Dallas, Texas, we stopped into the George W. Bush Presidential Center, to find a gem of a garden I had never heard of, the Laura W. Bush Native Texas Park ( link)

Amazing hillside of wildflowers, Laura W. Bush Native Texas Park

The land surrounding the Presidential Library looked ordinary

lawn, Laura W Bush Native Texas Park 

But on closer inspection the plantings show-cased native Texas plants.

That grass is our native buffalo grass (Bouteloua dactyloides), not an imported lawn grass.

buffalo grass (Bouteloua dactyloides)

A closer look at the lawn and it was full of blue flowers, Texas bluebonnets (Lupinus), just past their peak when I was there in April. 

the blue flowers in the lawn are Texas bluebonnets

Texas bluebonnets, Lupinus species (pea family, Fabaceae). (Five species okf bluebonnet are all considered the Texas state flower). 

Texas bluebonnets in the lawn

The first photo, at the beginning of this blog,  is a hillside you pass if you circle the building, glorious in blanket flowers (Gaillardia pulchella) and wine cups (Sphaeralcea involucrata). Closer view below:

blanket flowers (red and yellow) and
wine cups (purple)

The building was to the left when the hillside of flowers was on the right

The sidewalk led to a wooded path 

Begun in 2009, opened in 2013, it looked great, although the staff pointed out their ongoing struggle reducing weedy non-native plants. But they had lots of interesting natives doing well. This one caught my eye, Texas lantana, Lantana urticoides. To me it looks just like Lantana camara, a plant from the American tropics that is a serious weed, worldwide. How cool to be able to grow a Texas native that is equally pretty.

Texas lantana, Lantana urticoides

This sunny bench amid wildflowers looked out onto another hillside covered in flowers

a lovely place to sit

Here is the view from the bench:

hillside of sages

The blue and white and purple flowers are various native sages, Salvia species (mint family, Lamiaceae), certainly mealy blue sage, Salvia farinacea and perhaps others.

The salvias closer up:

Other individual species I photographed include 

prairie verbena, Glandularia bipinnatifolia

This bright red flower is probably standing cypress, Ipomopsis rubra (phlox family, Polemoniaceae). The Ipomopsis species I know are not nearly this robust. But this was Texas and the growing season is much longer. Isn't it spectacular?

probably standing cypress, Ipomopsis rubra

This is a spiderwort, Tradescantia (dayflower family, Commelinaceae) but I don't know which one because Texas has at least three species. Spiderwort would mean "spider plant", but it is for the plant's general shape, not particularly obvious in my photo, and not because it attracts or repels spiders. 

Tradescantia, spiderwort

And here was a longtime favorite of mine, blue-eyed grass, Sisyrinchium. Texas has at least 12 native species. They are in the iris family, Iridaceae, not really grasses (grass family, Poaceae). No grasses have bright flowers like blue-eyed grasses, but the blue-eye grasses have long, narrow, flexible, grass-like leaves, which probably explains the common name. 

blue-eyed grass, Sisyrinchium

In most cases I knew the genus and a common name from Nebraska or Colorado grasslands, but often these were different species. 

Maps of the Native Texas Park show a lot more areas which I missed, especially Texas native trees, from pecans (Carya illinoiensis) to redbuds (Cercis canadensis var. texensis) to possumhaw (Ilex decidua). And any other week I would have seen different plants in flower. 

The Laura W. Bush Native Texas Park was a delight.

Comments and corrections welcome.

References

DeLong-Amaya, A. 2025. The Texas Native Plant Primer. Timber Press. Portland, OR. 

Kathy Keeler, A Wandering Botanist
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