Thank you to everyone who joined us on April 24th for our webinar, Rethink Your Lawn: Adding Native Plants To Your Home Landscape! We received a lot of questions before and during our webinar, so to answer them, we created this easy, 3-step guide to creating your native plant garden.

Be sure to also check out our Native Plant Resources List!

Watch the replay below. Missed our first webinar? Catch up with Landscaping with Native Plants, Cost Savings and More to Dig! here.

STEP 1: SITE PREPARATION

First things first, if you believe you have invasive plant species growing in your yard or garden, it should be a priority to remove them before planting any native plants, or you risk the invasive species taking over and crowding out/killing your native plants. Check out the Residential Invasive Species Removal Guide from ROW/Reconnecting to our Waterways to learn more.

Ready to convert an area of your turf grass lawn to a native plant garden? Laura Essex explains how to do that step by step in this part of the recording of our webinar.

STEP 2: PLANT SELECTION

Especially if you are starting with a blank canvas, and you’d like your garden to resemble the beauty of the colors, textures, and shapes that occur in nature, we recommend reading about Native Plant Palettes on the Indiana Native Plant Society’s website. Here you can learn what plants are recommended for the area you are planting based on whether your area most resembles an Indiana woodland, a woods edge, a water’s edge, or a prairie grassland.

So many of your questions were about what native plants are recommended based on the specific area of your lawn or property, the amount of sun or shade that the area gets, whether it’s dry or tends to pool with water after a rain, etc. Although we couldn’t answer each question individually, we’ve listed just a few of the easiest-to-grow and generally easy-to-find flowering (unless otherwise noted) Indiana native plants below based on the amount of sun or shade and whether for wet or dry areas.

Easy to Grow Indiana Native Plants for Sunny Areas (average 6+ hours of sun/day)

Black-eyed Susan Rudbeckia hirta (Full or Part Sun, Dry to Moit Soil)

Wild Bergamot/Bee balm Monarda fistulosa (Full to Part Sun, Dry Soil)

New England Aster Aster novae-angliae (Full or Part Sun, Dry to Moist Soil)

Purple Coneflower Echinacea purpurea (Full to Part Sun, Dry to Medium Soil)

Swamp Milkweed Asclepias incarnata (Full or Part Sun, Medium to Wet Soil)

Switch Grass Panicum virgatum (Grass, Full Sun, Dry to Wet Soil)

Easy to Grow Indiana Native Plants for Part Sun/Shade (average 3-4 hours of sun/day)

Smooth Penstemon/Foxglove Beardtongue Penstemon digitalis (Full to Part Shade, Dry Soil)

Wild Geranium Geranium maculatum (Part to Full Shade, Medium to Moist Soil)

Columbine Aquilegia Canadensis (Part to Full Shade, Dry to Moist Soil)

Sweet Joe Pye Weed Eupatorium purpuream (Full to Part Shade, Moist to Wet Soil)

Heart Leaf Aster Symphyotrichum cordifolium (Full to Part Shade, Dry to Medium Soil)

Virginia Creeper Parthenocissus quinquefolia (Vine, Full to Part Shade, Medium Soil)

Easy to Grow Indiana Native Plants for Full Shade (2 or less hours of sun/day)

Elm-Leaved Goldenrod Solidago ulmifolia (Part to Full Shade, Dry to Medium Soil)

American Bellflower Campanula americana (Part to Full Shade, Dry to Moist Soil)

Wild Ginger Asarum canadense (Part to Full Shade, Dry to Medium Soil)

Ostrich Fern Matteuccia struthiopteris (Fern, Part to Full Shade, Medium to Wet Soil)

Are you looking for more options? To find the perfect plants for your yard or garden, the Indiana Native Plant Society has made it very simple to find exactly what native plants will be perfect for your individual site with the Indiana Native Plant Finder Tool! Search for native plants based on the amount of light, moisture, type of plant (ferns, sedges/grasses, shrubs, trees, vines or wildflowers), height, features such as what season it blooms, what pollinators it may attract and other notable features like whether it works well as a groundcover or is container friendly! You can start with how to use the Plant Finder.

STEP 3: NATIVE PLANT GARDEN MAINTENANCE

One of the many benefits of native plants is that maintenance requirements are very low compared to turf grass lawns or other non-native perennials! Usually just in the first year, however, there is a little bit of maintenance that likely will be necessary. Learn more about taking care of your new native plants in this article by Mark. M. Holeman Landscape (an HEC Green Business) and an article on Ecological Garden Maintenance by the Indiana Native Plant Society.

Enjoy your new native plants, and know that you are helping to create a better world right in your front or back yard!

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