About NativeYardAtlas.com
Learn how NativeYardAtlas.com helps gardeners choose native plants and planting approaches for their region, site conditions, and landscape goals.
Read guideA site may combine more than one challenge: shade over clay, seasonal wetness, dry soil beneath trees, or a slope that needs stable cover. Start with your location, the conditions you can describe, and what you want the planting to do. Then explore native plants and planting approaches for the places you garden.
Start with a question
- Find plants and profiles: Compare individual plants and build a shortlist around the traits that matter to your site.
- Browse site conditions: Start with clay, wet or dry soil, shade, drainage, slope, or another limitation.
- Browse by region: Add state, province, territory, or ecoregion context to a plant search.
- Browse by goal: Explore options for pollinators, groundcover, screening, rain gardens, and other landscape uses.
- Plan and plant: Move from a shortlist to site assessment, comparisons, design, and installation.
- Find a source: Explore native nurseries and seed suppliers and learn what to ask about plant origin.
Check each part of the fit
A promising match depends on more than a hardiness zone or a single plant label. Compare local native range with light, soil, drainage, and moisture; then consider mature size, wildlife value, establishment needs, and plant origin. These questions are related, but they are not interchangeable. No plant is native everywhere, suitable for every yard, or guaranteed to resist deer.
Coverage focuses on the United States and Canada. Use state, province, territory, or ecoregion context wherever it is available, and treat a broad match as a starting point when local detail is limited.
Plan for the whole planting
Plant choice is one step in a longer process. Explore native status and provenance to understand regional range and plant origin. Use plant communities and habitat design to combine species around shared conditions and roles. After installation, establishment and stewardship covers care and monitoring; troubleshooting and site diagnostics helps you work from a symptom toward possible causes and next steps.