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Regional Garden Builder
Draw one garden bed to scale, answer ten questions you can see from a window, and watch the space worked out: whether it works, what the plants would cost, and which natives suit the light, the drainage and your state. Free, and nothing to sign up for.
Then the whole state, on paper, for $7
The Native Planting Workbook is one state’s gardening knowledge as a printable book. 39 editions so far: Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming.
The year, month by month
What is worth doing in your state each month: what to plant, what is coming into flower, what to leave alone.
Every profiled species, for your state
What each one feeds, when it flowers, how it arrives at a nursery, and when each form can go in the ground.
The arithmetic people guess at
How many plants an area actually holds, worked out for the bed sizes people really have, so the nursery trip starts with a number.
What your state has listed
The plants your state says may not be sold or planted, printed from the state's own list, so nothing on a shopping trip surprises you.
Field sheets and buy lists
A printable site-assessment sheet and blank worksheets to take to the nursery.
It opens with your bed
Buy it from the free tool and the first pages are your own preview: the bed you drew, worked out to scale.
Plan your bed, then take the book
$7, delivered as a download the moment you pay. The terms of sale, in plain words.
What this will not plan
Some jobs need somebody standing on the site, and a form cannot replace that. If your answers point at one of these, the tool says so and stops rather than producing an answer it cannot stand behind.
- Engineered drainage, rain gardens or stormwater work
- Steep or eroding slopes, septic fields, or anything near utilities
- Wetland, shoreline or mitigation planting, which needs local permits
- Large-acreage meadow and woodland restoration
- Anything grown to eat, and any site with soil you have reason to doubt
- Diagnosis of a plant that is already sick
Where the facts come from
Every plant record carries its source. Nothing here is written from memory, and a field with no citation cannot be saved, which is checked on every build rather than trusted.
- What states have listed. Each state publishes a list of plants that may not be sold or planted, and those lists do not agree with each other. They are loaded whole, including the rule that a listing covers a species and all of its named varieties, and a species a state has listed is excluded here. Being native is not the same as being unlisted: some natives appear on the list of one state or another, and the book says which.
- Where you are. County resolves to an EPA Level III ecoregion, a winter low range and the nearest long-term weather station. No street address is asked for at any point.
- What a plant does. Size, spread, bloom timing and wildlife relationships are entered one at a time from published sources, cited by name and date. Where two sources disagree, both are kept and the page says which one it used.
- What we assumed. Anything worked out rather than told is labeled, and anything you did not know is carried through to a list you can check before you buy.
Every source, named, and what each one supplies.
Plants are excluded here when a state's published prohibited or noxious plant list names them, as of the date recorded with each list. Those lists change, states do not agree with each other, and local rules can be stricter than the state's. Nothing here is legal advice or a determination that any plant may be sold, planted, or moved where you live; check the current list published by your state before you buy.
This plan is decision support based on regional data sources, published horticultural references, and the site conditions you reported. Plant establishment depends on weather, soil variation, pests, planting technique, and care. No outcome, including survival, growth rate, bloom timing, or wildlife activity, is promised or guaranteed.