Celia Llopis-Jepsen

So online, there are lots of great like native plant societies, wildlife groups that will be regional.

They'll have cheat sheets, basically.

Like, here's the top 10 native flowers, you know, for the Midwest for a shade garden.

Or they'll, like, just plain lay out flower beds.

Like, here's a 10-foot wide flower bed for this type of bed in the southeast.

And you can, like, steal a cheat sheet and use it, right?

Make it a little easier for yourself.

And then the other thing that's nice about those websites is that they'll probably also have a list of places where you can actually buy those plants, which sounds like, well, how hard could that be?

But the reality is native plant gardening is still kind of niche in some places.

Some regular nurseries will have some of these plants, but like the surefire way to find them is to get a list of the native plant nurseries in your city or your state.

When you're picking your plants, you should pay attention to whether, for example, do you have a homeowners association?

Or are there like city codes that are particularly strict in your area?

Like I met one person who a city coder made them rip the milkweed out of their front yard.

So city rules can matter.

There can be rules specifically against tall flowers in your front yard or tall flowers within a certain number of feet of the curb to make sure you're not like blocking view.

Yeah, there can be rules like that that are worth paying attention to, definitely.

But to be clear, you can garden in a way that's going to fit in in your neighborhood.

So like if you live in a very manicured neighborhood and you want to fit in with that look, like you can do that.

Or if you want something that looks more naturalistic because that's your style, like you can do that too.

Yeah, buying lots of plants, that can add up really fast.