Native Plants for Wisconsin

Southwestern Wisconsin is the Driftless Area, a stretch the last glaciers flowed around rather than over. It is steep, carved into ridges and coulees, and its south-facing bluff prairies hold dry-prairie species on ground too steep to plow. Those bluffs are why prairie survived here in better condition than in most of the Corn Belt.

The rest of the state was glaciated, and it shows: flatter ground, kettle lakes, scattered wetlands, and a mix of sand and heavier soils depending on what the ice left. The Central Sand Plain is exactly what it sounds like and grows a drought-adapted flora. The north is Northwoods, cold and coniferous.

Southern Wisconsin was oak savanna, an open landscape of scattered spreading oaks over prairie ground, maintained by fire. It is one of the most reduced habitats in North America, and old open-grown oaks standing in suburban yards are usually its last survivors. Planting the savanna ground layer beneath one is among the most useful things a gardener here can do.

Restoration started here

The practice of deliberately rebuilding a native plant community began in Wisconsin in the 1930s, with prairie restoration work at the University of Wisconsin Arboretum in Madison and with Aldo Leopold's replanting of worn-out sand farm ground near Baraboo. Both sites can still be visited, and both are useful to a gardener for the same reason: they show mature native plantings rather than new ones, which is what a bed actually looks like in year ten.

Sand, clay, and shade

Match the plant to what the glacier left you. On the sand plain and other outwash soils, choose lean-ground species and skip irrigation after the first year. On heavier southern soils, deep-rooted prairie species do well. Under an existing oak canopy, the savanna and woodland-edge species are the right palette, and they tolerate the dry shade that defeats most garden perennials.

Plant in spring or early fall. Wisconsin winters are cold enough that a late-fall planting risks heaving before roots hold. Snow cover helps considerably where it is reliable.

Burning is how these communities were maintained, and small prairie plantings do respond to it, but it is legally regulated and genuinely hazardous. Mowing or cutting back in late spring achieves much of the same effect for a home garden.

Confirming what is native to your county

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources maintains a detailed natural communities classification, and the state has an unusually strong tradition of native plant nurseries and prairie seed growers who can advise on local genotypes. Wisconsin's native plant society chapters run field trips to remnants.

Sources: Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (natural communities and ecological landscapes); University of Wisconsin Arboretum (restoration history and species information); USDA PLANTS Database (native status by state).