Ask Mr. Smarty Plants

Unfortunalely, I don't know of any programs that offer grants, or even tax breaks, just for growing wildflowers. However, growing wildflowers for food for wildlife should qualify as one of the activities required to obtain wildlife management tax exemption for your property. In the Tax Code (Section 23.51 (7)), you can pick "(E) providing supplemental supplies of food" as one of the three ways, of the seven listed, to qualify for Property Tax Exemption for Wildlife Management. The hitch in this, though, is that "the property must have been qualified and appraised as agricultural land during the year before the year the owner changes to Wildlife Management Use." If you do qualify for applying for wildlife management exemption, you can contact the wildlife biologists in Texas Parks and Wildlife Department's Hill Country Wildlife District, which includes Hays County, for possible assistance in preparing your wildlife management plan.

To help you select the best wildflowers and plants you can visit the Texas Parks and Wildlife Deparment's Texas Plant Information Database page where you can search for plants for your county by various attributes (such as "wildlife/livestock food" or "small mammal cover") and their usefulness for "small mammals", "nongame birds", etc.

There are two articles, "Creating a Wildlife Garden" and "Wildlife Gardening Bibliography" in our Native Plant Library that you may find useful.