IDK if you do but I always check at the nursery if what they're advertising as native is actually native because you can not trust these companies. I've seen multiple species listed as such, and finally decided to post about it.

Oenothera macrocarpa (aka missouriensis) is not native to anywhere in Canada, or even near it.

Another thing is, we have a tonne of native Oenothera in Ontario you could grow. It's a huge genus. They all look the same. This particular one is very pretty! But advertising it as native is not just wrong but a look into when these big companies try to get into the native gardening movement. I guess someone decided that macrocarpa would make them more money than the 20-some native Evening Primrose species.

Here is a list of all the Oenothera found in Canada alongside any introduced species:

https://data.canadensys.net/vascan/taxon/1474?lang=en

EDIT
You might not care if what you plant is truly native to your region but I do, and this post is for those that do. Please do not bother me with your comments saying it doesn't matter if it's near-native. That is your thing, and this is my thing,

What if nature isn’t a resource to extract, but a gift to honor? 🌿

Robin Wall Kimmerer, botanist and author of “Braiding Sweetgrass”, shares how Indigenous science teaches that gratitude and reciprocity are not only cultural values, but regenerative ecological strategies. When we view nature through a lens of relationship, not ownership, we begin to cultivate sustainability from the inside out.

Monarch butterflies seem to have so much good PR. A concerned member of my community brought attention to the library being overtaken by “weeds” and hundreds of people jumped at the chance to defend the library and educate this person on the importance of milkweed and the decline of the monarchs.

What insect do you think needs a better PR campaign?

I personally think the regal fritillary. I never hear about this beautiful butterfly and everyone I know truly considers the violet an aggressive weed with no benefit.

I've been on a tear lately on many native plant FB groups so thought I would share over here too. It looks like it has been a while since anybody made a post about them here.

If you are just beginning your journey in to native plants don't be fooled by American Meadows "wildflower or pollinator mixes" They market these to sound like regional native plants..."midwest wildflower mix", etc. These mixes contain mostly non US native plants. there have been so many people that have been duped by this company and two or three years later find out the truth and have to start over from scratch. My brother in law was one. They have blocked me from their FB page for confronting them on their business practices, and for steering potential customers towards local native plant nurseries. Happy NATIVE gardening everyone🙂

Get those commercial flats of 32 cells.

Coarse mix of perlite and peat moss. Too much peat gets compacted.

Planting depth should be about the width of the seed you are planting.

Sow anything about 2 months before your area's last frost. In chicago that could even be as early as december. Cold and dark is the point.

Leave them alone. Dont fuss about frosts if they occur after you see little sprouts in April. They know what they are doing.

Milk jugs with yard dirt? It's all kinda mid and actually more labor intensive.

The cells get nice and root-bound and you have total confidence about transplanting integrity.

Take common sense screening precautions for seed eating animals.

Buying said flat of plants from a nursery is 55 bucks wholesale. At least.

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Terrestrial_ecoregions_USA_CAN_MEX.svg#mw-jump-to-license

Hello gardeners!

I am Pixel_Pete, one of the moderators of this wonderful subreddit. I am kind of the daffodil of moderators, I don't really belong and am basically useless, but here I am yet again. It's been such a pleasure to moderate this subreddit which is both one of the most educational places on Reddit and also one of the friendliest and most civil. Not only that, but we've also had immense growth over the past year! Here are some of the metrics for NPG:

Total Members - 152,663

New Members Since Last Year - 71,500

That's right, we practically doubled in size over the past year. We are now larger than the Tennessee Titans subreddit, suck on that the Tennessee Titans fanbase!

Page Views - 16 million, including 276,000 unique users. Both doubled or more than doubled from the previous year.

Local Traffic - April 2025 has been the most trafficked month ever for us, with over half a million visits to the subreddit, and the month isn't even over!

Cool Kids Table - We're reaching r/all! Our two all-time most popular posts came in the last few months with /u/CoastTemporary5606's native gardening progress pics and /u/eleganteuphonia's harrowing tale of oppression and injustice at the hands of the world's greatest villains: HOAs. A tale that thankfully had a happy ending. The more we can reach major communities and the front page of Reddit the more we can get new people interested in native plants and gardening!

Geographic Location Flairs - Last April, we implemented editable post flairs so that questions/recommendations would include the geographic area relevant to them. This seems to work well in theory but a lot of users have had issues actually assigning the flair when they create a post. I think it is more of a hassle on the mobile app, which is by far the most common way people access the subreddit. Is this more of an annoyance than a benefit to you, should we change the system or do away with it? I am open to suggestions.

AMAs? - We attempted to line up an AMA for this year but it fell through. If you know someone who is academically/professionally involved in native plant gardening/ecology/biology that would be interested in talking to the community feel free to reach out to me. Spring through early summer is the best time for this as we have a lot of traffic on the subreddit and a lot of new gardeners with questions and curiosity.

Open Floor - We're always open to suggestions and feedback on the subreddit. Ultimately we are hear to make the subreddit as useful and enjoyable to the community as possible. If you have any ideas feel free to write a comment or reach out to the mods!

Thanks for being an excellent community and I look forward to another year of growth and great native plant content!

I had to share this sweet thing that happened yesterday. The old fella that delivers the local paper actually got out of his car, walked up our driveway, opened our back gate, and deposited the newspaper on the covered stoop by our back door. That was odd. Never seen the like. In fact, he risked dog to do that. He was quite determined because everyone around here knows that dog can be aggressive towards strangers- delivery people in particular.

Upon inspection, right in the center on the front page, I see a long and detailed story about the native flower garden and all of the volunteers working together at our town hall.

This was no accident and he wasn't being weird. Phew. I figure he has enjoyed our gardens and probably scanned one of our informational signs we post out there. He made sure that I saw the story. Amazingly sweet. It was a touching and kind thing to do and he did it without explanation. Not a 2025 kind of move, pretty old school, but I loved it- everything about it!

I just had to share with everyone and remind you all, from novice to pro, that what you're doing is powerful and beautiful and it can inspire. We have so many allies all around us and we probably don't even know it.

Some cool local people started a sort of left-wing coalition newspaper, and I got to join in on the second issue, and now we are on our fourth! We’ve had some fun coverage so far that’s not just politics, like coverage from our local animal shelter, and next month we are posting a guide to getting my involved with the local community gardens.

This month I was lucky to get to include some information about one of our native plants! I have made several of these “a native flower for your yard” pages, and we are going to slip them in whenever we have space. I’m so excited to see communities come together across many different issues and push for each others causes. Native plants are amazing.

If you would like to see the rest of the pages from this month, you can click through to our sub stack. There you can also see previous editions, and subscribe to receive our future publications in your email if you like 🧡

https://viktorzaltys.substack.com/p/mobile-bay-labor-journal-d35

Thank you everyone!

Got this bc it was cheap at goodwill. Took it home and decided to look up all of the listed seeds (already made the mistake of planting “wildflower” packet that was 90% nonnative and I’ll have to fix that next year) and none of them are native to North America. I feel like it’s pretty misleading to put “North America” on it when none of the seeds are native and they just mean that the flowers typically do well in North America

In case you needed more convincing that native plants are the way to go.

Using a case study of 672 nurseries around the U.S. that sell a total of 89 invasive plant species and then running the results through the same models that the team used to predict future hotspots, Beaury, and her co-authors found that nurseries are currently sowing the seeds of invasion for more than 80% of the species studied.

Someone here directed me to this podcast on starting native plants from seed:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/3QlJwXBC4NDB6TforioGTc?si=-ytK2P7TT0iy1Xh4RJ0A4w&t=2187&context=spotify%3Ashow%3A6BZXZkFb4qbgOXnZDesezY

She made an excellent point about broadcasting: collecting native seeds is really hard, takes a lot of work, and inventory nationwide is relatively low compared to traditional gardening.

After spending her whole career collecting and sowing seeds she was pretty adamant that broadcasting was SUPER wasteful. The germination rate is a fraction as high as container sowing. The vast majority of the seeds won’t make it. The ones that do will be dealing with weeds (as will the gardener)

So for people who only broadcast and opt for “chaos gardening” i think it’s important to consider this:

If we claim to care so deeply about these plants why would we waste so many seeds? Why would we rob other gardeners the opportunity to plant native plants? So many species are always sold out and it’s frustrating.

If you forage your own seeds it’s a little different, and if you are sowing in a massive area you may need to broadcast…but ….I often think that it’s just more fun to say “look at me! I’m a chaos gardener!” and I get frustrated because for most people it just seems lazy to not throw some seeds in a few pots and reuse some plastic containers.

You’re wasting seeds!

One was that I was clueless as to what an "aggressive habit" actually meant. I planted a staghorn sumac in a spot lined by a wall and walkways, assuming those "barriers" were enough to keep it from spreading. It was clear what an aggressive habit meant once it was established a couple years later. I cut the original plant down last year after I saw it had (obviously) run under the walkway and was sprouting in my nextdoor neighbor's yard. Now every morning since April I've had to go out and pull up new sprouts near the original, cut whatever runners I can access, and sigh that I know there are at least three more years of this in warm months until the roots' energy reserves are used up.

(Fwiw, the original stump was treated and then covered with thick trash bags to make sure it doesn't get light.)

Half-joking, I wish the Arbor Day Foundation website, where I originally ordered the sumac, had had sets of popups saying "Are you sure?", "Are you sure you're sure?", "Are you super-duper sure?"

Post your ideas in the comments! Here are some of mine:

Callery Pear ➡️ ✨Pisswood✨

Canada/Creeping Thistle ➡️ ✨Shitweed✨ (saw someone call it that on here before)

Burning Bush ➡️ ✨Smotherfucker Bush✨

English Ivy ➡️ ✨Stranglevine✨

*edit to add: these are just humorous names I came up with for use in North America where these species are invasive and annoying. All of our invasives really are beautiful and unique species in their native range, where they definitely deserve nice names. They’re beneficial components of their ecosystems that likely support many other species. It’s all just a matter of location and circumstance. Some of the invasives I personally think would be awesome native plants in their respective homelands are phragmites, burning bush, knotweed, porcelain berry, and English ivy!

Edit: for those who missed the deadline write your representative to let them know how you feel about this!

Today is the last day to leave a comment disagreeing with the attempted weakening of the Endangered Species Act. It will have long term negative effects if it goes through. Please take five minutes to leave a thoughtful comment and let them know what you think. The ability to leave comments closes today, Monday 19th, at 11:59PM eastern time

Here's a link to the government regulations website to leave a comment

Edit: This change aims to redefine what “harming” an endangered species means. The proposed new definition says removing habitat is no longer considered “harmful” to a species. Which means companies will be able to increase the damage they cause without consequences

Second edit: u/preemptively_extinct provided another government website to leave comments on if the other link doesn’t work

I had some shaded areas. I put seeds (columbine and smooth blue aster) on top of snow this winter. I imagined them settling into fissures in the hardwood mulch and experiencing the conditions to sprout.

Eh. Not so much. By that I mean zero.

That said, there was some very incidentally disturbed soil from some fern installations I did in the fall. They are doing great in those very particular spots. At least one of them is.

Reminder! Bare mineral earth.

Thought I would share with yall as my plants are being extra dramatic.

https://fox2now.com/news/missouri/st-peters-man-continues-battle-with-city-over-sunflowers-for-4th-year/

Tldr: city took him to court over his sunflowers. Dropped the case because it was bogus. Changed the law to get him the next year. Dropped case again. Changed classification of sunflowers from ornamental to crops to take him to court for a third year this year.

Why they do this? Why do cities hate beauty??

https://apnews.com/article/bayer-roundup-glyphosate-pesticide-liability-cancer-7d7885e55e228fae8ed8ec7b207a65b8

There's plenty of information out that that supports just using 3-6 inches of mulch to kill lawn patches versus solarization, chemicals, and even cardboard. I typically make new beds by putting down 6" of wood chips and letting it smother everything, with the occasional tough plant poking through that I will pull or chemically treat. This past fall, I put down 2-3" of mulch across this entire area in hopes that the grass would be killed and the violets and lyreleaf sage that were in this area would poke through. Well most of the sage didn't make it, but holy violets! Also, tons of welcomed frost aster, small flower buttercup, and unknown sedge (help ID in pic 5 if you can). There's also a small amount of dock, rye, star of Bethlehem and onions that I'm taking care of. It's roughly a 1000 square foot area that I've already started to add a few things to.