Okie Garden is a field-note-style gardening site focused on Oklahoma’s native plants, insects, pests, pollinators, wildlife, and organic growing. It documents what works, what fails, what appears in the garden, and what careful observation can teach us about growing alongside nature.
The Author
My name is Justin Hansen. I’m not a trained biologist. My background is in engineering, where I learned to observe carefully, ask questions, and solve problems. Those same skills shape how I approach gardening and the natural world. I’ve always enjoyed observing and trying to understand the natural world around me. I want to share some of that with you and pass along what I’ve learned.
Whenever possible, I reference information from authoritative state and national sources, especially Oklahoma State University, the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation, the USDA, EPA, USGS, and peer-reviewed scientific literature. When sharing my own observations and experiences, I’ll say so. My goal is to present documented facts separately from my personal experiences so you can draw your own conclusions, just as I have.
I live in Green Country in the northeast corner of Oklahoma. I grew up in southeast Kansas. My family owned a small plot of land in the middle of a mile section. Most of my summers were spent exploring the woods, fields, and ponds around our home. I would occasionally wander onto neighboring property without explicit permission (I don’t recommend that part, just ask the owner). Plants fascinated me most, but I also developed an appreciation for insects, wildlife, and even fossils left behind by animals that lived long before us. We had access to a pond and I spent countless hours at the water’s edge, trying to identify every creature I could find.
When I wanted to know what I had found, whether it was a plant or an animal, I asked my parents, grandparents, neighbors, and anyone else who might know. They shared what they had learned through experience, and that curiosity stayed with me. Today we have an incredible amount of scientific information available at our fingertips. Sometimes it confirms what I was taught, and sometimes it challenges it. This journal is my attempt to separate tradition from evidence while appreciating the value of both.
I attended Oklahoma State University Institute of Technology (OSUIT), where I earned a Bachelor of Technology in Instrumentation Engineering Technology. I spent a lot of time at Lake Okmulgee simply enjoying nature. Engineering taught me to trust observations, test assumptions, and let the evidence guide my conclusions.
After college, I moved to Tulsa, where I met my lovely wife, and we spent the next ten years building our careers. Shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic, my wife and I purchased some property in the country. The land had been left largely unmanaged, giving me an opportunity to learn what belonged there and what didn’t. With the goal of building a house, I set out to clean up the property while doing my best to restore the native landscape.
This website is a record of that journey. It documents my observations, experiments, successes, failures, and lessons learned while restoring the land and learning about Oklahoma’s native ecosystems. I hope it benefits anyone who reads it as much as it has helped me.
Observe carefully. Verify with evidence. Share what you learn.