Starting a Native Plant Garden

• Get to know your site.
  • How much light does your garden get?
    – Full sun: 6+ hours of afternoon sunlight.
    – Part sun: less than 6 hours, morning or evening.
  • What kind of soil do you have? Is your site well-watered or dry?
• Visit local natural areas to see native plants in their natural setting, throughout the seasons. Pick natural areas that match the conditions in your yard.
• Consider adding natural items to provide shelter for insects, such as mulch, logs, and leaf litter. Plan to add a shallow dish of water for pollinators.
• Get to know more than 600 local native plants by exploring Glen Lee’s superb website Saskatchewan Wildflowers. Consider plant heights, remembering that they may be different in your garden than in nature.
• Plan with a succession of blooms in mind – crocuses in spring through to asters and goldenrods in the fall.
• Choose plants that support caterpillars of moths and butterflies and/or that are rich in nectar. See our Top 10 lists below for suggestions.
• Check out the simple requirements to register your garden with  Pollinator Paradise YXE here.

Top 10 plants for pollinators: full sun

1. Black-eyed Susan Rudbeckia hirta
2. Common Sunflower Helianthus annuus
3. Many-flowered Aster Symphyotrichum ericoides
4. Stiff Goldenrod Solidgo rigida
5. Bergamot Monarda fistulosa
6. Purple Prairie Clover Dalea purpurea
7. Smooth Aster Symphyotrichum laeve
8. Giant Hyssop Agastache foeniculum
9. Prairie Coneflower Ratibida columnifera
10. Meadow Blazingstar Liatrus ligulistylis

General tips

• Once the sod is removed, you do not need to add fertilizer or any other soil amendments. Most native plants will do well in what looks like poor soil.
• Avoid pesticides & fertilizers.

3 ways to remove lawn

You’ve decided to replace all or part of your lawn with native plants. Hooray! Start small, say a space 1 meter x 1 meter. Make a plan and add to it in stages.

1. Dig it up. If you are feeling energetic, you can dig up the lawn with a garden fork or spade, taking care to remove the roots. Shake the soil off the clumps of turf and compost what’s left. (Digging up lawn is a bit of a work-out, but we’ve done it, so we know it’s possible.) Alternatively, you may want to rent a sod-cutter or hire someone to cut the sod and roll it up. Use it upside down for mulch or compost it.

2. Sheet mulch the lawn by covering it with pieces of overlapping cardboard with all tape and staples removed. Wet down the cardboard before topping it with 3 to 4 inches of wood mulch. You may want to add a few strategically placed stones to keep the cardboard in place. You can plant plugs immediately or wait until next spring to plant them. Cut through the cardboard to make a planting hole and move the mulch back from the new plant. You cannot plant seeds using this method. The downside to this method is that sheet mulch (until it breaks down) impedes air and water transfer between the soil layers and atmosphere.

3. Solarize the lawn by covering it with a black plastic tarp, or heavy black plastic, using rocks or other anchors to hold it in place. The sunlight heats the black surface and in one or two summers, the grass, weeds and seeds should be dead. The downside of this method is the heat also sterilizes the soil life (beneficial microorganisms in the soil).

The method you choose will depend on your site (size, soil compaction, condition of lawn), your time energy, resources at hand and finances. Once the sod is removed, you do not need to add fertilizer or any other soil amendments.

To join Pollinator Paradise YXE, your native plant garden (or schoolyard or park) needs to meet four basic requirements:

1. Flowering plants – At least one kind of plant that is an important food for caterpillars, one wildflower species that provides pollen and nectar for pollinating insects, and a succession of blooms through the growing season.

2. Nesting and wintering sites – Insects need places to nest and overwinter. Leave the stems of plants, and mulch your garden such as wood chips, leaves or rocks.

3. Water – Wild bees and butterflies need a source of water, provide a shallow pan (or upside-down frisbee) with a few stones in it.

4. Ongoing care – Weed, water, and tend.

• Adventure guides
  Growing With Native Plants – focusses on why it is so important to grow native plants and includes lists of plants that support the highest number of butterfly and moth larvae, as well as those that provide nectar for large numbers of pollinators.
  City Wildflowers Tour – focusses on our 2022 Spring Garden Tour and includes lists of plants for part and full shade, as well as tips on removing lawn.
• Video guides
  A Complete Local Guide to Growing Native Plants
  Bringing Beauty Home: Growing Native Plants from Seed

External resources

• Native Plant Society of Saskatchewan – Plant Sources
• Landscaping with Native Plants in Saskatchewan – Facebook group
• Glen Lee Saskatchewan Wildflowers – Wildflower Identification
• Canadian Wildlife Federation – Native Plant Encyclopedia
• Alberta Wildflower – Growing Tips
• Alberta Wildflower – Establishing Native Wildflowers
• Xerces Foundation – Pollinator Conservation Program
  
• Bees of Canada