Education doctoral candidate Jake Walker has become Cougar Place’s resident green thumb and animal whisperer.
Known by the residents as "Plant Guy," Walker tends a garden on his Cougar Place patio, which consists of more than 50 different healthy plants. While gardening, he has seen many birds, lizards, brown snakes, squirrels and a rabbit wandering around Cougar Place.
"Not too many spiders are around here," said Walker.
Songbirds and egrets visit his garden for ripe pequin chilies or to coax him with songs for birdseeds. During his past two years at Cougar Place, Walker has conditioned squirrels to respond to a clicking call and birds to approach him for food.
"The animals here are not people shy," Walker said.
Walker currently is puzzling over the presence of a rabbit in the trees surrounding Cougar Place.
"There isn’t enough woodlands around here. What does it eat?" He said about all urban wildlife.
Walker is not afraid of ants, either. A trail of ants wandered up his arm as he displayed a sprig with red buds.
"Those aren’t fire ants," Walker said as he brushed off the bugs and continued speaking.
Walker dispatches fire ant colonies quickly, but otherwise he prefers to pick his battles with nature. He assumes an inquisitive attitude toward his local wildlife. Through observation of ant colonies and other animals around Cougar Place, Walker has learned a lot about the urban jungle.
Walker’s patio garden attracts the most attention from Cougar Place residents. His plants were deemed unmarketable by a local plant store but they have blossomed and curled over his patio with daily watering and generous amounts of sun. Notable members of his garden include a ripe chili bush, a three-foot tall pencil cactus, a bonsai ficus and philodendron vines that climb over the pillars of his room.
Inspired by photographs of wild ferns sprawling over rainforest branches, he used clay and rejected clippings from a plant store to grow a fern in a nearby Cougar Place tree. His latest projects include rejuvenating a dehydrated potato vine and petunia. During the winter, however, Walker leaves his plants out.
"This is Darwin’s garden," he said.
He likens the plants in his collection to "shark’s teeth." Once he gives away a plant, he rescues more rejected clippings from his part-time job at a plant store.
Cougar Place residents regard Walker as a captivating teacher of wildlife and gardening.
"Be the kind of neighbor that you want," said Walker on his philanthropy.
