Special to the NEWS
WESLACO—The Valley Nature Center’s Native Plant Project’s guest speaker for the February 28 meeting in Weslaco will be Robert Gaitan, President of the Rio Grande Valley Chapter of the Texas Master Naturalists.
Gaitan is a Valley native born and raised in San Benito. According to a biography provided by the VNC, Gaitan left the Valley after high school to attend college and pursue a business career, and returned three decades later to take a position as a high school science teacher.
In order to help him understand the relevancy of his students’ textbook to their lives, Gaitan became a Texas Master Naturalist in 2014. It was then that he discovered the uniqueness of his backyard and the peril of our native species and native habitat.
Gaitan and his wife, Barbara Peet, began wildscaping their yard in San Benito long before it was the popular trend that it is today.
After eight years of trial and error, they have settled on a simple method: if you let it, nature will show you the way.
Much to their surprise, they were asked by the National Butterfly Center to be a stop on their 2022 Texas Butterfly Festival tours after posting some photos of butterflies they were seeing in their yard on social media.
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