Yesterday at the inaugural Pride Day event at UT’s Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, the wildflowers weren’t the only ones showing off their colors.

Gardening enthusiasts, local community members and organizations gathered at the center to celebrate Pride Month with talks about native plants, a Pride Hike through the center’s arboretum and family-friendly drag bingo.

“Lady Bird Johnson said ‘The environment is where we all meet,’ and I do think she meant all of us,” said Scott Simons, the Center’s director of marketing and communications, in an email. “We’re happy to be hosting this event celebrating diversity in our community.”

Simons said the center started planning the event a few months ago and felt “it was time to join the fun” of celebrating Pride. Local Instagram influencers Andrew Ong and Jared Goza, known online as @gayswhogarden, hosted a walk-and-talk tour around some of the center’s gardens. Ong and Goza said their account serves as a place of outreach, both for the LGBTQ+ community and gardeners with an interest in native plants and sustainable gardening.

“Having ‘gay’ in the name, I feel like, especially in today’s environment, it’s become like activism,” Ong said. “We feel like having that visibility in the community is definitely important. We have that interest (in gardening), but we also identify as part of the LGBT community. There’s people out there doing normal day-to-day stuff and still being yourself.”

Goza said he and Ong have memberships to the center and frequently attend its wildflower sales throughout the year. They both said coming to the center inspires their backyard garden at home.

“I think there’s a lot of opportunity (for future Pride Days),” Goza said. “It wasn’t super crowded. I don’t know if that’s like the social climate we’re in or if it’s just location because it’s really far out here. As it happens each year, I think it’ll grow, and there will be more people involved.”

Several community organizations, including Garden Seventeen, the Texas Organ Sharing Alliance and Equality Texas attended the event. Jonathan Cruz from Equality Texas said his organization brings awareness to anti-LGBTQ+ legislation from the state Legislature, and they also provide resources to queer people in need by partnering with organizations that offer direct services, like Lambda Legal and the Transgender Education Network of Texas.  

“I think it’s important that families get to celebrate Pride,” Cruz said. “We’re just happy to let people know that we offer any sort of resources for the queer community they might need.”