What can a native plant garden look like?

Real gardens, real plants, real impact.

Wildflowers and plants growing in a damp forest ground with green foliage and raindrops on leaves.
A garden with tall white flowering plants, green leafy bushes, and orange flowers against a dark brown house wall with a white-framed window.
A lush garden bed with various green plants, including ferns, leafy ground cover, and small flowering plants with white, yellow, and purple blooms.

Rain Garden - Process

The back of a house with a small staircase leading to a porch, with some dirt and grass in the yard, a blue drain cover, and some construction debris.

In 2021, we had a need to capture rain from the porch roof and additional water from a sump pump outlet drain. We did some soil testing and determined this site would be a great candidate for a rain garden, without many additional inputs.

A freshly mulched garden bed with green plants, located underneath a house with stairs leading up to a porch. The house has white and brown siding, and the porch railing is white.

Shovels and plants went in the ground in September 2021. Sod busting, berm creation, and plant install was complete in one day. Plants included:

Asclepias incarnata - swamp milkweed

Chelone glabra - white turtlehead

Eupatorium coelestinum - blue mist flower

Lobelia cardinalis - cardinal flower

Mimulus ringens - allegheny monkeyflower

Vernonia novebracensis - new york ironweed

Deschampsia caespitosa - tufted hair grass

Cephalanthus occidentalis - common buttonbush

A small garden area with mulch, plants, and water runoff near a house and sidewalk during a rainstorm.

After one winter, the plants were still small but growing! This image is from May 2022, where the garden basin was capturing water from a big rain storm. Water falling from the dripline of the roof is funneled directly into the rain garden. Once there, it slowly infiltrates into the ground, away from the foundation of the house.

Backyard garden with flowering plants and shrubs in front of a house with a porch and stairs.

In June 2024, plants were fully established. Penstemon was thriving (foreground). We added a few plants around the edges (like the dogwood on the right) to increase the garden footprint and get rid of some more lawn.

Robust established native rain garden

The garden in all its fall glory (September 2024). The blue mistflower dominates the scene, while the ironweed towers in the back. New England asters (right) provide even more color. The garden continues to capture and control runoff with little to no maintenance.