How-To

If you want to begin your own native wildflower garden(s), big or small, this page will help you with it.

When I first began growing natives, I did not understand the most fundamental rule for growing them: habitat replication. While it is true that some wild plants will grow almost anywhere and be as happy as a clam, others will either do very poorly or will simply just die, without their natural habitat. When I first started, I was putting all of my plants in ordinary black garden soil; it did not go well for many plants. Plants like Trillium grandiflorum will grow almost anywhere and do very well in ordinary soil, but plants like Epigaea repens will not grow without very strict requirements.

For this reason, I have to say that habitat replication is the single most important thing that must be done to grow native plants. If you do this properly, even the plants that most people say are "impossible" to grow, will grow with ease for you. This usually means providing different types of soil (for instance, sand or rocks, instead of black dirt) or it can also mean making amendments to the soil for pH, because some plants require certain acidity levels to grow. Also important can be moisture levels. Plants that are native to bogs, fens and wetlands will usually not grow without those conditions (there are always a few exceptions, but most will die... and quickly without these conditions.)

To help beginners, on each species' page, we have given the plants an ease of growing score between 1 and 10; one being the easiest to grow, while ten indicates it is the most difficult to grow.

To see more information about how we gathered all these plants and from where, please visit this page: How We Do It

Finally, we have recently begun a line of e-books designed to help you in building your own gardens. If you are interested in checking them out, please visit here: Grow Wild

Please also see our page on Facebook, where we post near daily photos of wildflowers from around the yard: In Defense of Wildflowers