American Native Nursery | A Native Plant Nursery

I finally had time to watch the video.  I am really pleased with your creativity, and am looking forward to Spring when we can see the finished product!  I will talk to you in the Spring about my woods.  In addition to adding plants, I wonder if they shouldn't be thinned out behind the back of the house.  We have 10 acres back there. 

- No-Mow Lawn Customer in Richlandtown, PA


Thank you so much for the invaluable advice and the walk-through of our garden.  I am so impressed with your knowledge and you are definitely taking this to a whole different level than the professional people we have talked to.

As I told you, people here typically go to the same few places like Johnson's or American Plant for advice and/or hire landscapers to do everything for them. As a result, you noticed correctly that we have been "handled by the same people." The yards look very similar; after you brought it to my attention I started to notice many common themes, such as the bush and shrubbery alongside the house walls, the straight lawns, cut by the sidewalks, etc.

I am very excited to pull all those barberry bushes you recommended and start afresh.

- Native Plant conversion customer in Chevy Chase, MD



Wildflowers do much more than add beauty to the landscape. They help conserve water, reduce mowing costs, provide habitat for birds, butterflies and other wildlife, protect the soil and save money on fertilizer and pesticides. Also, as Lady Bird Johnson said, native plants "give us a sense of where we are in this great land of ours."

[...] Unlike many non-native plants, native plants introduced into landscape plantings are hardy, less susceptible to pests and diseases and unlikely to escape and become invasive. With properly selected native plants, it may not be necessary to modify soil characteristics at all to have thriving gardens. The great variety of plants native to any region give gardeners options that work well in any type of garden design. Because maintaining native plants requires less work, they provide excellent choices for large commercial landscapes as well as residential gardens.

- University of Texas at Austin Wildflower Center


...I too enjoy the thrill of walking a mountain path and coming across a colony of galax or blue cohosh. [...] My problem is this: when I see such magnificent populations, I want them in my garden.  I can't help it.  It may be a genetic flaw, but that's the way it is.  While I do enjoy hiking to those lovely drifts in the mountains, I would rather hike to my garden bench, mug of coffee in hand, and see such colonies beneath my beloved oaks.

- from Armitage's Native Plants for North American Gardens


Compared to lawns, manicured shrubbery or bark-mulch covered beds, naturescapes are tremendously low in maintenance. Native plants grow well together (they evolved growing along side one another) and to predictable sizes. They do not need watering (except during establishment), nor do they require chemical fertilizers or any of the commercial biocides - herbicides, insecticides, fungicides - they are adapted to local conditions and to local "bugs" ... . They also do not require raking because leaves in a naturescape are a soil builder, weed suppressor and natural fertilizer.

- PlantNative.org

Why do yards and window boxes across the country hold the same impatiens, begonias and mums? Most of America's favorite garden plants hail from places like Europe and Asia.  [] We should seek our alternatives to hardware stores, corner delis and other outlets that offer "one size fits all".

- Gardening with NYC Native Plants

Pachysandra Procumbens [...] our US Native is superior to its more universally used Asian cousin, Pachysandra terminalis, which is a very aggressive, stoloniferous thug in the garden. Pachysandra Procumbens is well behaved, clump forming groundcover that fills in an area with style and elegance. [...]All in all, it's hard to find a better, all around more useful ground cover than Pachysandra procumbens.

- GardenWeb.com