Plant care for the plants you already own

Care by season

What the yard needs now, and what can wait.

• Fall Freeze Checklist for Colorado Front Range Native Gardens

  Denver's normal first freeze is October 11, but one year in ten it lands by September 27. A fall checklist built on your own date, not the state's.

• Fall Care Guide for Your Texas Native Plant Garden

  What to do with your Texas native garden in fall. Covers what to cut back, what to leave standing, when to plant, and how to prep for winter while keeping things tidy for your HOA.

• Summer Native Plant Care in Texas: Heat, Drought, and What to Trim

  What to do with your Texas native garden in summer. When to water, what to trim, and how to keep things tidy through the heat without overcorrecting.

• What to Plant in Your Texas Native Garden This Spring

  Spring planting season in Texas starts now. Here are the best native plants to put in the ground this March and April, organized by ecoregion, sun exposure, and what blooms when.

• Plant This in May Before Texas Summer Closes the Window

  May is the last planting window before Texas summer heat makes establishment nearly impossible. Four native plants to get in the ground now, plus the mulch rule that determines whether they survive June.

• Solarize the Lawn in July, Plant Natives in Fall

  Fall is a good window to plant native perennials, which means the lawn has to go before then. Solarizing uses July heat to clear turf without herbicide. A Blackland Prairie guide to the four-to-six-week process, how to time planting off your first frost date, and why you apply for the rebate before you touch the grass.

• How to Collect Native Plant Seed From Your Own Garden

  The plants that bloomed in late spring are ripening seed right now, and the window does not announce itself. How to tell when seed is ripe, how long the harvest window runs, and how to dry and sow it so winter does the rest.

• How to Help Pollinators Through a Heat Wave

  A heat wave is harder on bees and butterflies than it looks. The highest-value things you can do are small and quick, and a few are about doing less: a shallow water source, no spraying, leaving the flowers up, and keeping something in bloom through the summer gap.

Freeze and frost

Start with your own dates. Look up the first and last frost for your ZIP code from the NOAA 1991-2020 normals, then work back from there.

• When to Plant Natives This Fall: Count Back From Your First Freeze

  The fall planting window is not a month on the calendar. It is roughly six weeks before your average first freeze, which ranges from mid-September to December across the country. Here is how to find your date and what to do after planting.

• Fall Watering: Keep Going Until the Ground Freezes

  Watering stops when the air cools, weeks before the soil does. Here is the fall watering rule that works in every state, how deep a soak has to go, and why evergreens are the plants that pay for a dry September.

When to cut back, prune, divide, and water

The questions where the answer is a week, not a technique.

• When to Divide Native Perennials, and the Ones You Should Never Dig

  Divide spring and summer bloomers at least four to six weeks before your ground freezes, not on a fixed date. Here are the three signs a clump is ready, how to split it, and the taprooted natives that should never be dug.

• When to Stop Pruning Native Shrubs Before Winter

  Extension services put the cutoff at mid-August. Pruning after that pushes soft growth that cannot harden off before frost. Here is the timing, the four-D exception, and what an August cut costs you next spring.

• How to Water Native Plants Through Their First Summer

  The first summer is when most new native plants die, and the cause is almost always water. A deep, tapering watering schedule that pushes roots down, plus how to tell overwatering from underwatering.

• Pull the Weeds Before They Set Seed

  Late summer is when annual weeds set seed, and one crabgrass plant makes about 150,000 of them. Here is the late-summer weeding pass that matters, in order, and what to do with what you pull.

• Container Roses in August: Why the Advice Changes by City

  Illinois Extension says stop fertilizing roses after August 15. Clemson says stop six weeks before your first frost. Those are different dates in different cities. Here is the mid-August answer for ten metros, with the free local expert for each.

Something wrong with a plant?

Start from what you can see. Each page ranks the likely causes, gives you a check that takes a minute, and says when a cause is unlikely where you live.

• Leaves turning yellow
• Wilting even though I watered it
• The soil dries out in a day
• My pot has no drainage hole
• Leaves curling
• Holes in the leaves
• Black spots on the leaves
• Tiny flies around the soil
• It did not come back this spring
• Brown crispy leaf tips
• It is dying right after planting
• Bugs on the plant
• White stuff on the leaves
• Tall, leggy or falling over
• It is not growing

• Is Your Native Plant Dying or Just Hot? How to Read Summer Stress

  Midday wilting in a heat wave is usually normal, not a death sentence. How to read a young native plant's summer stress signals, the two-inch soil test that tells you whether to water, and how to tell heat wilt from overwatering.

Care by plant, region by region

These species carry care guidance written separately for each ecoregion they grow in, with the source for every claim. Open one and enter your ZIP to jump to your own region.

• Little bluestem60 regions
• Switchgrass57 regions
• Wild bergamot57 regions
• Smooth aster53 regions
• Butterfly weed52 regions
• Swamp milkweed52 regions
• Black-eyed Susan50 regions
• Cardinal flower50 regions
• New Jersey tea41 regions
• Wild columbine39 regions
• Rough-stem goldenrod35 regions
• Joe-pye weed32 regions
• Winterberry31 regions
• Lanceleaf coreopsis30 regions
• Inland sea oats28 regions
• Prairie dropseed26 regions
• Purple coneflower24 regions
• Prairie blazing star23 regions
• Sideoats grama22 regions
• Blue-eyed grass18 regions
• American beautyberry16 regions
• Stiff goldenrod16 regions
• Indian blanket15 regions
• Common yarrow15 regions

Or browse by region

Each region opens the ecoregions inside it, with the natives that grow there.

• Eastern Temperate Forests
• Great Plains
• Marine West Coast Forest
• Mediterranean California
• North American Deserts
• Northern Forests
• Northwestern Forested Mountains
• Southern Semi-Arid Highlands
• Temperate Sierras
• Tropical Wet Forests

Care reminders for your own plants

Everything above is written for a plant in general. The app writes it for yours: watering that skips the rain, seasonal tasks timed to your region, and a freeze alert before the cold lands. Care is free, for every plant you own, native or not.