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Seven Steps to Planning Your Native Landscape
Interest in native landscaping is growing in popularity. This time of year leading up to our spring plant sale, homeowners and businesses contemplate what they would like their landscape to look like....
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Scott’s Top Ten Sun-Loving Plants for Spring 2015
One of the themes this spring for planting is diversity. By planting a diversity of wildflowers and grasses in your garden, you will attract many different forms of wildlife, including pollinators and...
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Shade plants worth trying
There is always that area in your landscape that is shaded. These areas can be frustrating, because they don’t grow turf well leaving the soil bare. Here are a few good shade plants to spruce up that...
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Water Smart: Steps to Establishing Your New Plants
Now that you have purchased your plants at our FloraKansas plant sale and hopefully gotten them planted in your landscape, you’ll want to be intentional about watering methods. It’s true, native plants...
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A New Must-Have Plant Identification Book for Kansas
Oenothera macrocarpa (MO evening primrose) – photo by Michael John Haddock For 35 years, Janét E. Bare’s popular book Wildflowers and Weeds of Kansas has been one of the standards for plant...
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Favorite Penstemons for the Landscape
Penstemons are beautiful spring blooming wildflowers that provide incredible color and attractive forms. I have been convinced through trial and error that some plants are more garden worthy than...
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Three Lessons I Have Learned About Native Plants
When I started at the arboretum 18 years ago, I thought I knew so much. I had book knowledge about horticulture, but I had not learned much about native plants. In fact, information about native...
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Plant Profiles: Butterfly Milkweed
As I drove through the Flint Hills this week in late June, there were orange dots among the prairie grasses that caught my eye. Few plants found on the prairies of Kansas are as readily recognizable...
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Native Plant Alternatives for Three Common Non-Natives
One of the great things about native plants is that there is so much diversity found in the prairie. From wet to dry, sun to shade, clay to sand, there is a plant for every place in the landscape....
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Silphiums: Four Pillars in the Tallgrass Prairie
2015 seems to be the year of the genus Silphium in the arboretum. In recent years, I can’t remember them looking so bright or growing so tall. With the spring and summer rains these sun-loving,...
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Asters: Autumn’s Crescendo
Mention fall blooms to most gardeners and they think of chrysanthemums. Blooming in September and October, “mums” are the major source of color in most late-season gardens. Another group of...
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Five Ways Native Plants Enrich the Environment
One of the traits of being a horticulturist is a heightened awareness of plants. The good, the bad, the ugly, the sad, and the beautiful are all critiqued. My family is used to it, but they still...
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Garden Resolutions: Going Green in the New Year
In honor of the new year, you may be promising yourself to eat better, exercise more or take that dream vacation you deserve. But what about your garden? Here are 5 garden resolutions to make your yard...
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How to Plan for Pollinators
It is hard to believe, but it is mid-January already. Spring is right around the corner. Yes, it will be here before I am fully prepared. Are you ready for spring? Do you know what your garden...
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Native Plants Are Becoming “The New Normal”
What is normal? A definition I like is “the usual, average, or typical state or condition.” So, what would most mid-Westerners think of as a “normal” landscape? How about a landscape dominated by...
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Principles of a Sustainable Landscape Design
Through our work in promoting the use of native plants in landscaping, we have observed that homeowners and gardeners are becoming increasingly aware of the positive impacts they can have on the...
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How Do You Learn About Native Plants?
This weekend, I did some reflecting on the past 19 years I have spent at the arboretum. I thought I knew so much when I was hired as the horticulturist. After all, I had just graduated from Kansas...
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Gardening as Entertainment
For me, there’s something fun, exciting, and even entertaining about gardening. It is an adventure every year. I love the journey of taking a plant, any plant, and making it grow. To see a plant...
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Katie’s Plant Picks: Mint Family
Working in the Arboretum greenhouse is a terrible temptation. I love my perennial garden at home and I never stop adding new specimens, so our selection of natives and adaptables this year is a...
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Native Plant Combinations for the Landscape
Many people who visit our FloraKansas Plant Sale are very interested in converting their gardens to using native plants, but they often are unsure of which plants to put together and in what...
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