“Nature in the Heart of Wimberley.”
That was the dream Patsy Glenn would help create The Refuge when she moved to Wimberley along with her husband David Glenn.
Since her passing in 2007, the refuge has become the Patsy Glenn Refuge while continuing her dream of having a place where people can enjoy the sights and sounds of nature all within the city limits of the Wimberley.
The origins of the Patsy Glenn Refuge start at the banks of Cypress Creek.
For David and Patsy, moving to Wimberley was made out of necessity due to Patsy’s health.
“We came to Wimberley in 1993,” David Glenn said. “It was because Patsy was ill and could not live in an urban environment so she lived here in Wimberley and regained her health on the banks of Cypress Creek in Bill Johnson’s cabin. She also changed her lifestyle from an urban one to a Wimberley one. Prior to that over the last 30 years, we lived in San Francisco, Houston, Denver, Copenhagen, Denmark which are all urban cities. That’s why we came to Wimberley, so basically to see if she could regain her health, which she did.”
While recovering from her health problems, Patsy began to enjoy the peacefulness of the outdoors while also gaining a new furry friend.
“She lived adjacent to Cypress Creek and very close to where the Patsy Glenn Refuge suddenly developed,” Glenn said. “She spent a lot of time sitting outdoors trying to regain her strength and could see the birds. Plus she developed a dog friend named Allie who lived across the way next to Cypress Creek, and she and Allie became great friends while I was busy working in Houston and coming back for the weekends.”
It was here that both Patsy and David became involved with the Wimberley Birding Society, which was very small at the time.
“She got in contact with a lady named Jackie Duffie,” Glenn said. “She and her husband, there were four people, left in the Wimberley Birding Society at that time. They had four meetings a year so each person was in charge of getting a speaker for that meeting and so she (Patsy) got interested and involved and I got interested and involved to where we became co-presidents of the Wimberley Birding Society.”
However, the Birding Society’s membership grew and expanded due to the influx of people moving into the Wimberley Valley.
“In the late 90s, there were a lot of people coming to Wimberley and retiring,” David Glenn said. “We got interested in the Birding Society, and we had a little growth spurt in which we had over 100 members at that time in a span of four or five years. In that time a man named Jerry Hall and his wife Dottie had retired here and Jerry took over the field trips that the WBS took. So there was a lot of getting outside and at least every month we had trips locally to the parks and the places that existed and at least every three months we took one trip to a birding destination like the Rio Grande Valley or the Gulf Coast near Galveston then every year we took a long trip to places like Maine, Glacier National Park, Puget Sound…so it was a good growing time for the Birding Society.”
The idea of the Refuge came from Patsy who wanted a place for people to enjoy the beauty of nature within the city limits of Wimberley.
Her dream then came to fruition when the citizens of Wimberley bought land to be used for what is now the Wimberley Community Center.
“It was Patsy’s idea,” Glenn said. “The land was purchased by the citizens of Wimberley with the goal of building a community center where people could come together, which was Bill and M.F. Johnson’s goal while also persevering the Winters-Wimberley House and Zach House. A portion of the land, which was about two acres in the back of that parcel, was a drainage area and easement where you couldn’t build any buildings back there… so Patsy said ‘Why don’t we turn this area into a refuge for the birds, animals, plants, and people who live in the area”. We called it the North 40 project when it started in 2000. We asked the Wimberley Senior Citizens if we could use the land for that, which they said, ‘Yes, we will work with you.’ Also in that year the city incorporated and the senior citizens had given the land that they had purchased for the visitors center to the Wimberley Institute of Cultures, and the rest of the land was given to the city of Wimberley to build a community center on it. Then the Wimberley Birding Society took the two acres in the back and started developing it into the Refuge.”
While the Patsy Glenn Refuge may be known as a bird watching destination, the area is also a place where people can enjoy the plant life but also learn about the importance of land conservation.
“Her vision was ‘Nature in the Heart of Wimberley,’” Glenn said. “The nature part of it wasn’t the fact that there were a lot of birds there and still a herd of deer there, but also the plants. Darren and Dale Hood worked in the Lady Bird Johnson Museum in Austin, Texas at the wildlife center there. They were interested in the botany and the plants, so they got the Lady Bird Johnson Center to do a survey of all the natural plants that were in the area. The other part was that there was a lot of land stewardship, because as we were developing the Refuge, we were trying to set good examples for people who come here and build a new house with some land on how to maintain and develop their land in a conservation type of way. So we had classes on conservation, how to cut the cedar trees and how to use them to hold the water in this drainage area. Patsy was also an ex-school teacher, and she wanted to have the Refuge to be a place where people can come and hold meetings which has grown since then. In fact, all the third graders in Wimberley come here to do science/ conservation stewardship meetings in the Refuge run by the Master Naturalists.”
The Patsy Gleen Refuge has many features for visitors to enjoy from a birding blind, to a butterfly barden, a wetlands project, to a Chimney Swift tower.
“They enjoy birdwatching,” Glenn said. “Jesse Huth built a birdblind for his Boy Scout Eagle Project, which is kept up by the Birding Society who fill all the feeders. A lot of people like to come out during the spring time when all the flowers are in bloom and just walk along trails all the way back next to Sabino Ranch. Now people get to enjoy the wetlands area. Then on the upper end we contreated that into a butterfly garden, which we planted native plants to attract all the butterflies. The kiosk is actually a Chimney Swift tower, so people at night can see the Chimney Swifts come flying down the tower to land and spend the night. There is also a rainwater collection system put in for land conservation to teach people how to capture rainwater and use it for their needs.”
The next project of the Patsy Glenn Refuge is to save one of the more historic landmarks.
Within the Refuge is a dry stacked rock wall built in the 1800s by the original families who first moved to the Wimberley Valley.
However, increased stormwater runoff has threatened to not only take out the historic wall but also threatens existing trails and educational operationals.
To combat this, the Wimberley Birding Society has a creative and multi-faceted proposal to help mitigate the increased runoff. To date, nearly $14,000 has been raised or pledged for funds or in-kind donation of service hours by the Wimberley Birding Society along with their partners the city of Wimberley Parks and Recreation Department, Cypress Creek Protection Plan, Meadows Center for Water and Environment at Texas State University and Hays County Master Naturalists.
But none of this would have been possible without the dream of Patsy Glenn and the people who have made her dream come true after her passing.
With her dream of having “Nature in the Heart of Wimberley,” the legacy of Patsy Glenn will continue to be honored at the Refuge.
