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Keeping a Green Thumb Despite Drought

By: Tyler Thomason

Updated: July 17, 2012

The heat doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon. We know it affects those who "work" and "play" outside, but what about those who do a little bit of both in the garden?

We visited the Botanical Garden of the Ozarks in Fayetteville on Tuesday. He tells us how you can keep your thumbs green, when everything else seems to be turning brown.

"Obviously it makes everything harder. Everything just tends to slow down in the summer," says Lissa Morrison, who treats gardens at the Botanical Garden of the Ozarks.

She says the heat makes it tough, but she's not giving up that easily.

"We keep it beautiful in spite of the heat," Morrison says. "Gardeners are the eternal optimists, that's why we keep doing it. We just can't help ourselves. We just keep planting and hoping for it."

For the passionate planter, the summer is a season of survival. Local garden experts say there are three things you can do to keep your garden alive: Add a little extra mulch, pruning or cutting back -- and of course a little H2O.

"We're not quite to the point where we have to water 25 hours a day, but it could get there," says Gerald Klingaman, Operations Director for the Botanical Gardens of the Ozarks.

And there's still plenty of summer left to go.

"At this point, if you've got newly planted plants you just have to water daily to keep them going. Even things that have been in the ground three, four, five years -- you need to be watering at least once a week," Klingaman says.

But only one water source can truly put a dent in the drought...and whether than comes sooner or later - only time will tell.

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