Native - Fine Gardening

  • How-To

    How to Clean Up the Garden Without Harming Beneficial Insects

    Traditionally in our region, gardens were cleaned up in fall for practical and aesthetic reasons. By spring, with weeding, watering, sowing, and dividing all begging for attention, time can be…

  • Plant Guide

    Hardy hummingbird trumpet

    Zauschneria arizonica

    This heat-loving native Southwestern species has gray-green leaves and grows to 3 feet tall and 2 feet wide.

  • Plant Guide

    Soapweed

    Yucca glauca

    This clumping evergreen shrub with narrow leaves produces a startling, 3- to 4-foot-tall flower stalk.

  • Plant Guide

    Rusty blackhaw viburnum

    Viburnum rufidulum

    While North American native viburnums occur most commonly in the eastern United States, rusty blackhaw viburnum flirts with the edge of the Plains.

  • Plant Guide

    Culver’s root

    Veronicastrum virginicum

    This species has multiple tapering, soft spikes of white to pale pink or bluish purple flowers that look like elegant, living candelabras.

  • Plant Guide

    Piggyback plant

    Tolmiea menziesii ‘Taff’s Gold’

    With its mottled cream/green foliage, 'Taff's Gold' can brighten any dark garden area.

  • Plant Guide

    Propeller toad shade

    Trillium stamineum

    This striking spring-blooming species features narrow, chocolate-colored petals that twist like a propeller over slightly mottled leaves.

  • Plant Guide

    Giant trillium

    Trillium chloropetalum

    This species blooms in early to mid-spring with large blossoms of white, yellow, or deep purple-black.

  • Plant Guide

    Dwarf wakerobin

    Trillium pusillum

    In spring, the foliage of this petite species emerges a deep purple-black-green and is topped by white blooms with rippled petals.

  • Plant Guide

    Bent trillium

    Trillium flexipes

    This trillium produces large white flowers above the foliage in mid-spring, but the flowers are later hidden as the flower stalks nod.