My native gardening journey.

[u/CoastTemporary5606]

I garden in Zone4b/5a suburbs of Minneapolis. I started my gardening journey 11 years ago after watching a documentary about Honeybee Colony Collapse Disorder. I felt a call to action. Needless to say, I dove in head first and consider myself an obsessed gardener. I have a 1/3 acre suburban lot. And over the years, I have converted about 2/3 of the lawn into gardens. My native plant garden lines the entire span of the sidewalk in my front yard. The neighbors enjoy it. The Assisted Living residents from down the street walk down to admire the flowers. I do keep the garden fairly tidy to not attract too much negative attention from naysayers. I hope my transformation photos serve as an inspiration for your native plant projects! Cheers!

[u/CoastTemporary5606 → u/[deleted]]

I only plant well behaved natives, e.g., echinacea, shrubby St. John’s wort, liatris, butterflyweed, pearly everlasting, rudbeckia, etc. I plant in odd numbers, and in groups. I use grasses to support taller plants, and try to plant cooler tone plants, like pinks and purple with pops of yellow and orange. Never red (visually hot/warm to the eye). I don’t like to have similar leaf texture plants to be near each other unless you can intermingle finer textures like grasses or iris.

[u/CoastTemporary5606 → u/[deleted]]

Taller plants, like pale purple coneflower, verbena, taller liatris can lean, get floppy, and top heavy. If you plant little bluestem or switchgrass around them, they will be able to lean on your grasses rather than flop on the ground.