The first native plant that caught my interest and got me thinking about native plants is the White Wood Aster. When I moved into my house 6 years ago in early September, I didn’t know much about gardening or plants. But I knew I wanted to take care of my new yard. Most of the plants in my yard looked dry after the heat of the summer and weren’t any flowers. Except for a couple white wood asters that just started to open. Over the years I transplanted a few and spread its seeds. Now I have a lot in my yard and the insects love them.
I since realized they grow in all the wooded areas around me. It inspired me to see what other native plants could be added to my yard.
by Downtown_Character79
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Tomatillos. I couldn’t get any because I had a lack of pollinators. So that led me turning one of my beds into a native wildflower garden. Since then I’ve had no lack of pollinators.
I love white wood aster, it might be my favorite. My first was spicebush. I was getting into birding and read that spicebush berries are an important food source for the fall bird migrations, and the leaves are also the food for spicebush swallowtail butterflies. So I got one and have been hooked ever since.
I don’t have berries yet but this year (year 3) i got flowers for the first time, and confirmed I have a female. We’ve had so many spicebush swallowtail caterpillars, tho. I love them.
Swamp milkweed started it all for me! 🧡
Hyssop! I planted a nativar and it did so well I looked it up, found out it was native and it blew up from there. Now I’m seed collecting, found sources for straight species and deep into the world!!
does white wood aster do good in dry conditions??
Butterfly bushes. I planted a bunch and then found out they don’t help butterflies
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Ramps! This patch got me started on a “forest floor” garden
Joe Pye was growing wild in an overgrown area of our property and I noticed how much the bees loved it. A little more research and next thing I knew I was planting more of it in my beds, as well as swamp milkweed, echinacea, and I even let the goldenrod grow in my beds (wasn’t planted)
Beautyberry bush and native azaleas.
The delicate but super tough alpine wildflowers I would see on my hikes in the Rocky Mountains. Started to wonder if I might be able to grow them at home. So far a few have stuck!
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Beautyberry and swamp milkweed
For me it was wanting to grow honeysuckle finding out the type I grew up with is invasive and looking up native types. From there I went down the rabbit hole and came out with a new appreciation for the plants around me.
Heucheras because I was trying to maintain a container garden in shade and started to delve into why they were doing so much better than the other perennials.
Now I’m trying to mix in as many natives as I can, though I don’t shun non-natives completely. They just need to be managed to avoid causing any harm. Being largely containerized helps there, as does deadheading.
Joe pye
I wanted to be able to identify trees and plants while walking and hiking. When I realized how many ‘weeds’ growing were non-native it really got me interested in growing native plants.
Virginia Springbeauty’s & spring ephemerals in general (trout lily, trillium, etc.) got my obsession started, even though I don’t have any in my garden since I don’t have its desired habitat 🥲. I started noticing them on my walks in the woods and when researching them found out all the benefits of planting native. I then proceeded to buy $100 worth of native plant seeds lol.
For me it was the fleabane asters and common milkweed that started popping up in my yard. Such beautiful plants! I would mow around them. That was 35 years ago.
Nannyberry! It just so happened to check all the boxes for the difficult spot I needed a shrub to fill and all my research lead me down the rabbit hole. Another would be Goldenrod because it grows happily in a spot where everything the previous owner planted has died of dehydration 😂
Oh also wild violets. The whole property is violets and I let them have all the space they want in the garden as a ground cover . I do take a bit out if it’s smothering another plant but that’s it. Way way better than traditional lawn. I’m just sitting back and watching the slow motion battle the violets wage on the grass and cheer for the violets haha.
Agreed, white wood aster is a great plant. Easy to grow from seed, tolerant of damp to dry soil, deep shade, and can handle some direct sun too.
end of summer coreopsis yellow flowers
I didn’t know it yet, but the spiderwort I got from my aunt was my very first native.
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House came with amazing native rhodies and some phlox and black eyed susans and sneezeweed and false sunflower, wild strawberry and grass leaved goldenrood volunteered first year. Plus lawn violets!
A lady on NextDoor gave away free coral bells and obedient plant.
I been all in from those humble beginnings. I even have a beloved volunteer calico aster now. 🙂
Hard to say, but it’s probably oak leaf hydrangeas. I spent a good amount of time removing invasive honeysuck, tree of heaven, prickly olive, privet, vinca, and the like from the woods around my house. The neighbor liked having things grow up between our lots, and so I planted the hydrangeas to replace 15’ honeysuckle bushes and privet I ripped out.
That turned into learning more about what natives I could plant. Now it’s just more and more learning about native species that will work well in the sunny and shady spaces, what species they provide habitat for, and replacing as much of the sloped lawn that I don’t want to mow with native grasses and wildflowers.
Creeping phlox. It’s just so cute!
It wasn’t a specific plant that got me started. It was BUTTERFLIES. Of all my life achievements, I’m most proud of my certifications–wildlife habitat, bird sanctuary, and Monarch Waystation. My yard is filled with native pollinators, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals.
The combo of goldenrod and asters that volunteer in my yard every year made me want more! I love the purple and yellow together and they bring in sooo many pollinators
I worked at a nursery that specializes in natives so all the plants.
I have pretty much the exact same story as you, except with goldenrod! My volunteer frost aster bloomed shortly after and definitely helped pique my interest, too.
Do you have any tips for transplanting aster? What time of year do you recommend? I have several in less-than-ideal locations around my yard where I have to trim around them.
My first was purple coneflowers, which I’m sure is true for many of us considering how popular they are even in non-native gardens! When we moved into our house, it was gardened very attractively by the last owner, but seemed to get no pollinators whatsoever. I looked up native plants and purple coneflowers were basically the only native species that I could find at big box nurseries.
They were really popular with the bumbles, so I slowly delved further into it. I’ve been slowly replacing plants over the years. I destroyed all the invasive species in year 1 and 2. It was a slog – periwinkle, burning bush, barberry, dog strangling vine, yellow and purple loosestrife were everywhere. Now I replace a few things each year with natives….it’s a slow process but we’re probably 2/3 native species now.
The first time I saw Liatris punctata, Dotted Blazingstar’s vibrant pink/purple blooms I was floored. “Surely this must be a rare specimen!” I thought, only to discover it was a tough plant that grew everywhere. It really kickstarted my desire to know more about the plants I had not paid any mind to.
Highbush blueberries. Last year I started growing some in containers on my balcony garden, and learning about them opened up the floodgates for me in researching what grows in my area and getting jam-packed with ideas for what else I could grow, which turned into an incredibly fun year in experimenting with growing natives in containers in a relatively restricted space. Honorary mention to echinacea purpurea and swamp milkweed though, which I was most excited to grow this year, and kept me excited for blooms and smells and caterpillars all summer.
Japanese honeysuckle. It’s all I see now.
Columbine. So easy to propagate. Tolerates so many light/water conditions. Early flower for hummingbirds and other pollinators.
Cup plants got me going. Now it’s everything native. Love all of it
My first was milkweed (Any), I think they are so unique looking and so colorful and I love to photograph them. But I have no garden (yay apartments with no balcony) but I currently have a northern blue flag iris as a memorial plant for my cat named Iris who passed in April. If my iris plant can live long enough for me to get property I’ll plant in a more permanent spot.
Iris versicolor 🙂
Yellow lady’s slipper (Cypripedium parviflorum) back in my teenage years : I loved orchids but was too busy/lazy to take care of tropical ones, so I snatched them when I saw some at the annual plant sale of our Botanical Garden. They multiplied for several summers in my father’s flower beds.
Strangely enough, my HATE for the grass growing in my food garden and then finding out dang near everything except the big trees in my yard were invasive. WITH ONE EXCEPTION, I found out through an invasive removal group in my region that one of the “trees” in my yard was Chinese Privet. I was devastated, had it hacked down, and I’ve been planting natives and aggressively removing the reoccurring seedlings of privet ever since. And Yes 🙂↕️ now I understand there are native grasses which I fell in love with and sedges. The Fireflies appreciate it too
I have had a lifelong curiosity of the natural world and its critters. I’ve always been horribly distraught with climate change and species extinction. I started looking for ways I can tangibly do something about it. I found the monarch/milkweed and kill your lawn movement. Bought my first house with my fiancé 5 years ago and immediately bought a prairie seed mix. That got me hooked and now I have over 90 species of native plants in my yard.
To answer your question, probably milkweed. This is why movements like this are so important. We are so detached from our natural world. You have to show people why this is important and they will find their way to the bigger picture.
Started with one tiny Purple Meadow Rue (Thalictrum dasycarpum), just 2 little leaves. Grown into a full patch (about 6′ tall, 5×5 sq ft). Since added So Many more Native Wildflowers, with more food & habitat for pollinators! 🐝🕊🦋💚
Oak leaf hydrangea. Needed something to take up a lot of space on the full shade north side of my house, and it absolutely fit the bill. I had even come to terms with it not flowering but it flowers like a champ.
It wasn’t so much a particular plant. My brother became a Master Gardener and started talking to me about native plants. But I was fortunate enough that the Rudbeckia fulgida that had already taken a hold in my yard were native.
Such a good question! Milkweed was definitely one because 🦋🦋 but I loved black eyed susans early on (and still do) because they kept blooming when the rest of the garden was dying back 🌼
Basic bitch answer, but milkweed. I got to witness a monarch migration when I lived in TX as a kid and I hoped my kid would get to have the same opportunity one day. Learning about the monarch life cycle and the importance of milkweed launched me into this obsession.
Frogfruit, from not wanting to have a lawn that needed constant mowing and didn’t do anything for the pollinators. Still working on getting it transplanted into my yard. I’m aiming for a plastic-free yard, which basically means no buying plants. Luckily, there’s a bunch of frogfruit nearby that I get my cuttings from. Recently started 29 plugs. I’m excited to stick them in the ground in about a month and trade them for other natives at an upcoming plant swap.
Trillium ovatum. I got the impression it was my grandmother’s favorite native – she was always excited to see them when we walked in the woods in the spring. Her influence has led me to gravitate towards woodland understory flowers and spring ephemerals.
Redbud and Washington hawthorn.
Becoming an openlands tree keeper at the age of 13. The March of the ents…finding out about TOH…
Kind of inversely, struggling with non natives and having to move tropicals indoors led my lazy ass to easier-to-care-for and hardier natives.