Grow Native: Bringing Natural Beauty to Your Garden

Lynn M. Steiner

May 2016 · Quarto Publishing Group USA

About this ebook

Support your local ecosystem! A guide to transforming your yard into a beautiful landscape using native plants—includes inspiring photos.

You don’t have to compromise beauty to create sustainable, ecologically responsible natural landscapes. In master gardener Lynn Steiner’s Grow Native, you’ll find guidance for planting stunning gardens using native species that support your local ecosystem. Organized in an easily accessible way, the book offers instructions for planting and maintenance, helpful tips about soil, watering, and fertilizing, and gorgeous photography. With advice about how to weave native plants into your landscape and replace common ornamentals with natural plants, Grow Native combines inspirational garden shots of native landscapes with plant-specific chapters and photos. Topics covered include:

- Hardiness Zone Maps

- Inspiration Gallery: Gardens Full of Native Plants

- Why Grow Natives?

- What Do You Mean by “Native”?

- Choosing plants that are drought-tolerant, hardy, easy to care for, and more

Additionally, sidebars throughout offer pointers for attracting specific butterflies, birds, bees and other beneficials to your yard—all through plant selections.

About the author

Lynn Steiner is one of the Upper Midwest's best-known garden writers and a frequent speaker at gardening and environmental events. She is the author and photographer of several books that advocate for the effective use of native plants in the typical home landscape. Landscaping with Native Plants of Minnesota, the first book designed to identify Minnesota's native plants and plant communities and to demonstrate how to use them effectively in a typical home landscape, was a finalist in the 2006 Minnesota Book Awards in the Science and Nature category.Lynn is the author and photographer of several other books, including Rain Gardens: Sustainable Landscaping for a Beautiful Yard and a Healthy World, published in February 2012. Other titles include Landscaping with Native Plants of Wisconsin, published spring 2007, and Landscaping with Native Plants of Michigan, published in 2006 and named a Michigan Notable Book for 2007. She also helped develop, wrote, and provided photographs for The Complete Guide to Gardening series, ten regional gardening books published in 2012 by Cool Springs Press.For fifteen years, Lynn was the editor of Northern Gardener magazine, the official publication of the Minnesota State Horticultural Society. Under her direction, Northern Gardener received several Overall Excellence awards from the Minnesota Magazine & Publication Association, and several individual contributors received Garden Writers Association Media awards. She now writes a column for the magazine titled "Northern Natives."Lynn lives with her husband and two cats on a 115-year-old farmstead in northern Washington County, Minnesota, where she enjoys tending her gardens and watching the progress of her restored prairie, savannah, and oak woodland.