VIEW CURRENT DIGITAL EDITIONS NOW!

Editor’s Note: The Texas Historic Commission outlines 12 Texas regions of interest in its Texas Heritage Trails program. The following is a look at the Texas Hill Country Trail, the first part of a series on these trails.

Serenity on tap. A historical treasure chest brimming with natural gems. A place where you can have your high art and your barbecue, too, washed down with a bottleneck of Ziegenbach. More than 19 counties and a crock pot of German, Mexican and cowboy culture comprise the Texas Hill Country, one of Lone Star’s best-kept secrets. The Texas Historic Commission wants Texans—and the rest of the world—to know about this mystique.

For me the Texas Hill Country comes in two versions.

Violets are a labor of love that, well, doesn’t really require all that much labor.
Ken Froboese, retired banker and owner of Hill Country African Violets & Nursery in Boerne, Texas, started his love affair with African violets almost 40 years ago. It began as a project for his mother and ended up with Froboese hooked on the lovely exotics. While his nursery has a wide variety of garden plants, including beautiful orchids, the African violets remain near and dear to him.
“They are addictive,” he says. “We have people who travel across the United States and stop because they have seen in the African violet magazines that we have them.”
Froboese recently returned from the Texas State Violet Show and Convention where his plants took many blue ribbons and third best of show. His nursery has an diverse array of the beautiful and showy violets, and he says new varieties are developed all the time.