Choosing Native Plants for your garden:

There really is no going wrong with a native planting if your goal is improving the natural world and provide ecosystem services. Especially if you live in a urban or suburban area with very little habitat left for local wildlife. A design can help you visualize the garden or if you are new to gardening can help you learn the plants and remember what plant is what. However designs are not needed and if you plan on letting your garden self seed and naturalize the original design might not be very accurate after several seasons.

To create a native garden that is both visually pleasing and beneficial to wildlife, we first need to go outside. Go visit a local wild life area, conservation land, native prairie, diverse woodland, or other natural area near you. While traversing the trails or exploring off trail try to pay attention to what plants you see growing, where they are growing, and what other plants they are growing near. Hiking with a field guide or plant ID app can be really helpful when trying identify and learn about the plant communities you are seeing. No Amount of books on the subject, lectures, or webinars can replace the knowledge and understanding you will gain by getting outside yourself.

Picking plants

When Selecting plants for an area it is nice to break the area up into zones. Maybe there is a shady zone and a sunny zones, maybe there’s a wet area and dry area, or breaking the area up into layers or drifts can also be nice.

Begin by making a list of species that work in each of the zones you have broken the area up into. Once you have complied a list of species that will work in each zone, double check that each zone has at least 1 but ideally 3 or more species that are in bloom at all parts of the growing seasons. Make sure there are early spring blooms, late spring blooms, early summer blooms, late summer blooms, early fall blooms, late fall blooms.

Once you have finalized your species list now its time to figure our how many plants you need. Generally, a dense planting made of smaller to medium sized species requires 1 plant every 1-2 square foot. Planting sparsely to begin with can lead to unwanted weed pressure in the first few years of the planting. Buying plug trays of ground cover plants like smaller forbs, grasses, and sedges can extend your budget and provide you with green mulch as your planting establishes.

Design Tips:

Planting plants with overlapping blooms times and contrasting colors near each other can be very visually striking. Examples: Purple beard tongue, pale purple coneflower, and lance leaf coreopsis / Wild bergamot and grey head coneflower / Prairie blazing star and black eyed susan’s.

Planting species in large clumps or masses can really accentuate a bloom type or color of bloom

When trying to create a natural looking garden consider the following: Planting grasses and sedges in higher percentages making up 30% - 50% of the planting. Creating drifts of different plant communities that intersect the planting, scattered clumps. Planting lots of different species (high diversity planting). Mixed heights, Scattering tall and short plants through out the planting.

Quick Tips:

• How to find square footage: Length x Width = sqft

• If You prefer an organized look try planting in layers or large clumps of species.

• Plant large plants near each other to help them from falling over. Example: blazing stars surrounded by little bluestem

• Sedges make great edges

• Plant higher quantities of slow spreaders, lower quantities of aggressive spreaders

• 25% grasses & sedges to 75% flowering forbs

• Quick plant estimate: 1 small plant per sqft

• Check bloom times, try to have at least 1 or 2 species blooming each month, overlapping bloom times works best.

• Afternoon sun can be intense, try more full sun/part sun species in these locations, even if there is shade for rest of the day.