My first garden other than just planting flowering plants bought at a nursery was a vegetable garden from seed. Talk about clueless! And it was in my new (back then) place where nobody had gardened and lacking much that could be called topsoil...mostly just caliche and rock, but a bit of dubious soil had been piled up by the previous resident...that's what I used at first, adding a bit of fertilizer. It's surprising that anything came up at all. Not deterred, I later tried a few veggie plants from the nursery planted after adding whatever amount of topsoil I could afford at the time. Somebody told us that people out here can't grow anything like that. So I took that as a challenge and started trying to educate myself from books, magazines, etc. And talked to a few people about gardening with difficult soil and a high heat environment with limited amounts of rain. None of those people live in my exact area, but they still helped me some, since the city nearby had some of the same problems we had. I already had an interest in wildflowers and collected a little seed to try. It was later that I took a course with field trips in wildflowers, then one about woody plants in the area. After that I found a native plant organization to join and I also found a local chapter of Texas Master Naturalists (that organization in Texas was still in its early years). The professor that taught those two courses along with many people in those 2 organizations were definitely mentors! Not to mention some nursery people!
