Ozona Bank donates to Greenbelt Alliance to help wildflowers

At its core, the reason Ozona Bank in San Marcos donated to the San Marcos Greenbelt Alliance is simple.

“We’ve got to keep those flowers growing,” Jenifer Reed, Ozona Bank Branch Manager at the San Marcos, said. “It is what Lady Bird wants.”

The bank donated $1,000 to the Greenbelt Alliance to help seed wildflowers in the alliance’s 6 natural areas covering more than 1,200 acres with 22 miles of trails.

“This will help, because we have to buy seeds,” John Cradit, president of the San Marcos Greenbelt Alliance, said. “We will buy them, go out in the meadows and find places where we can get good germination for the seeds and see if we can get some wildflowers back.”

It will also help the health of other portions of the ecosystem.

“It helps bring in the butterflies and the bees and helps the environment,” Cradit said. “Also, it is nice to look at.”

Ozona Bank wanted to find a way to give back and the Greenbelt Alliance stood out. Reed said that the organization’s 25 years of history, as well as the fact that it is all volunteer, really sealed the deal. “And we do more than just the trail building,” Cradit said. “We do environmental education. We work with the schools to bring school kids out and have them walk the trails and and then educate them about the environment and how important it is. Then, this type of project also protects the recharge zone, which supplies water to the springs and the river. So educational factors are a good part of it and community outreach … to educate people on the entire working on the ecosystem.”

Anyone interested in donating to the San Marcos Greenbelt Alliance will take donations at the branch location on Wonder World Drive.