Kirkwood, Kris

Kris Kirkwood is a Texas Master Naturalist and Native Plant Society of Texas member who has spent the last 14 years learning about plants - good and bad - of the Texas Coastal Bend.

Kris was always interested in plants—houseplants, to begin with… She grew up in the Panhandle of Texas. After college, she and her husband moved to New Mexico, where her husband worked at White Sands Missile Range. From there, they relocated to New Jersey, and then back to Central Texas, and then to the panhandle of Florida, and then to the Norfolk, Virginia area, moving to be with his job. During all these moves, the variety of “outside” plants in each area began to get her attention. When her husband retired in 2000, they moved back to Texas – first Aransas Pass, and then Rockport, where they had fallen in love with the windswept live oaks on a visit 25 years before.

When they moved to the Coastal Bend, they wanted a way to find out about the local wildlife, birds, and plants. An ad in the paper directed them to Texas Master Naturalist training, and they got hooked on the ecosystems of south Texas. Kris began taking photos in order to get help identifying plants that were far different from the plants of her childhood in the Panhandle and all the places in between. That’s really still her basic reason for taking photos—the desire to know more about the native plants around her.

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