Our Yards Can Be Better
A native landscape isn't just a different way to garden. Done well, it can cost less to maintain, solve problems around your property, produce food, manage rainwater, clean the air, and become more beautiful and resilient as it grows.
Spend Less Time and Money Maintaining Your Yard
Lawns and traditional landscapes need ongoing mowing, watering, fertilizer, weed control, pruning, and replacement plants.
Native landscapes are designed to need less from you as they establish. Plants suited to the conditions can require little or no supplemental irrigation, fewer fertilizers and pesticides, and less routine maintenance.
Less mowing. Less watering. Fewer inputs. Fewer plants to replace.
And unlike a traditional landscape that has to be continually maintained to keep the same appearance, much of the work in a native landscape is being done by the landscape itself.
Solve Problems Naturally
Too wet. Too dry. Too shady. Erosion. Standing water. Weeds. Invasive plants. Slopes where nothing seems to stay put.
Nature has plants and systems adapted to all kinds of conditions.
Rain gardens can capture runoff. Deep-rooted vegetation can stabilize slopes. Dense plantings can cover bare ground and compete for space. Plants matched to wet, dry, sunny, or shady microclimates are much more likely to thrive.
Instead of constantly fighting the conditions in your yard, work with them.
Beauty That Gets Better
A conventional landscape can start looking neglected when you stop maintaining it.
A well-designed native landscape works differently.
Plants spread. Roots deepen. Trees and shrubs mature. Groundcovers fill gaps. Flowers reseed. Plant communities become denser and more established.
The goal isn't a yard you have to constantly make look good.
It's a landscape that gets better at taking care of itself.
Grow Food Everywhere
Food doesn't have to live in a vegetable box.
A landscape can include berries, edible greens, herbs, fruits, nuts, roots, and perennial foods woven right into the planting.
That means the same landscape giving you shade, privacy, flowers, and habitat can also give you something to eat.
Walk outside. Pick something. Eat it.
Cleaner Water. Cleaner Air.
Your yard is part of a much larger system.
Trees and vegetation capture rainfall, slow runoff, help water soak into the soil, and filter pollutants before they reach waterways. Vegetation also captures some airborne pollutants, stores carbon, and provides cooling and shade.
Even a small yard can become a tiny piece of functioning green infrastructure.
Bring Life Back
Native plants are food and shelter.
Flowers feed pollinators. Berries and seeds feed birds. Trees and shrubs provide nesting and cover. Fallen leaves, stems, logs, and healthy soil create places for insects and other small organisms to live.
A lawn might be green.
A native landscape can be alive.