Gardening with Native Plants: DIY not your thing?

Help is out there!

My niece recently called. She has many super talents but is not yet a gardener though she kindly follows nutsfornatives. As she purchases her first home, she wants to use native plants which, of course, makes my heart warm! She is busy with, in normal times, a very heavy travel schedule. So, the advice -- find a garden design business that will walk through your new garden with you, talk about plants you have and use your budget to come up with a plan to layer in native plants over time. Along the way, you will learn and, in the future, when time allows, you can dig in yourself. She is in Austin, TX so I suggested she find a business there like Backyard Bounty who designs, builds and maintains gardens here in Northern Virginia, Washington DC and Maryland.

Even if you have no plans to hire assistance for your garden, you may swoon over the Backyard Bounty habitat and native plant portfolio as I did! This gorgeous perennial bonanza, for one, looks so enticing.

I write about plants I have grown, nurseries I have purchased plants from and projects I have undertaken with the goal of making it easier to garden with native plants. With no formal training, I can only write from experience. How can I write about Backyard Bounty if I have not hired them? Gardening is a passion, a contribution to the health of the Bay, inspiration, exercise and more for many of us but not everyone has a lifestyle to accommodate it. Yet, you may still want to have a garden with native plants! So, I have slowly been talking with people who do this for a living, checking out their work and talking to garden owners they have worked for so that I can share the names of people who can help make your native plant garden vision a reality. Backyard Bounty is one of those talented groups of people.

There are a few more native plant services here and I know there are many more out there across the Chesapeake watershed. If you know of any we should check out, please share!

I hope you have a chance to enjoy gardens of the Chesapeake as summer flowers peak.