Whether you’ve grown alongside Grow Native! since its beginnings or are a recent fan from the native plant community at large, we hope you’ve been enjoying our anniversary year so far. Perhaps you’ve collected a free commemorative sticker at an event, enjoyed a guided tour of a residential or public native garden, or enjoyed other special events hosted by our professional members. It’s been a pleasure to serve and work alongside such a vibrant community!
As summer continues to heat up, we invite you to take a break and cool down in the AC with a few of our online resources. We encourage you to explore under all of the tabs on the Grow Native! website for more.
Many are familiar with our annual Resource Guide, which is published each winter for the following growing season, and how to use our Native Plant Database to get down to the nitty-gritty with specific native species. But did you know that Grow Native! offers numerous landscape plans, native plant top 10 lists, and fact sheets available for instant download to guide your projects and answer common questions? For some topics, we’ve created more in-depth resources that address the nuances of different plant choices and maintenance situations.
Additionally, Grow Native! amplifies edible natives content, including recipes, webinars, and fact sheets. And that’s not all! Curious about Natives, Cultivars, and “Nativars”? There’s a resource for that. Interested in collecting native seed and stratifying it to prepare for planting? There’s a resource for that, too. Wishing you could get your hands on a detailed season-to-season list of “to-dos” for your landscaping? There’s a Native Landscape Care Calendar page for that, and much more. Some resources newly added this year include a Bilingual (Spanish/English) Native Plants reference, Labeled Native Gardens reference, and Common Weeds in Gardens guide.
There are resources for prospective and current landscape professionals as well. Grow Native’s Native Plants for Stormwater Management: Species Selection for the Lower Midwest, by Daniel Shaw and Rusty Schmidt, was developed to guide project planners and designers through the process of selecting plant species for a variety of stormwater practices. Likewise, the Grow Native! Native Landscaping Planning Toolkit for Municipal Professionals details step by step how one can make the case for, plan, construct, maintain, and advocate for increased native plant landscapes in our communities.
While you’re exploring everything the Grow Native! site has to offer, take a detour to the MPF YouTube channel where you can revisit webinar recordings on popular perennial topics.
Photo of common buckeye on willow-leaved aster by Bruce Schuette
