Sourcing the Best Native Plants

Keep these tips in mind when ordering plants for gardens and hedgerows. 

Choose Plant Size Wisely Large plants aren’t always the best option. Small plants and plugs are usually cheaper, easier to install, and often establish more quickly than large plants. Bare root plants are another good, economical option, although not all plant species are sold this way and fall bare-root availability is often more limited than in spring.

Choose your Planting Season Spring is the classic time to plant a garden, and there is generally a greater range of species available in spring. However, fall planting (early September through mid-October) is often better for native plants. Fall planting provides a full fall, winter, and spring for plants to establish their roots before they’re subjected to the hot and dry conditions of summer. This can reduce the amount of watering needed and increase plant survival. (The same principle applies in meadows, where fall seeding can give plants an early head start over spring weeds and increase overall survival.)

Straight Species Only - No Cultivars When sourcing native plants for pollinators, it is essential to plant the “straight species,” rather than a cultivar (sometimes called a “nativar”). Cultivars are plants that have been bred by humans for certain aesthetic characteristics, such as large flowers, purple leaves, or compact stature. They are labeled with a proprietary name after their species name, such as Monarda didyma ‘Jacob Cline,’ where Monarda is the genus, didyma the species, and ‘Jacob Cline’ is the cultivar selected for upright, mildew-resistant stems. 

Some cultivated characteristics nullify the plants’ value to pollinators, such as double blooms in this Echinacea cultivar. Here, the extra petals replace important pollen-bearing stamens - in other words, this common “pollinator plant” no longer provides much actual pollen. Photo: Adobe stock images

Cultivars are usually clones of each other, with identical DNA; and a large planting of cloned plants lacks a diverse gene pool to keep the population varied, healthy, and adaptable to emerging changes in conditions, pests, and diseases. Identical plants also lack the natural variation that makes them extra beneficial to pollinators, such as varied bloom time, which can extend the season in which pollen and nectar is available. And cultivars can migrate into natural areas, where they are not appropriate.

Local Ecotype: The Gold Standard The best native plants for pollinator conservation projects are sourced from local seed, which means they represent the local “ecotype.” Choosing plants grown from local wild seed preserves the unique characteristics that have evolved in the local plant population over thousands of years. This stewards the diversity of our bioregion’s plant genetics; and we know that locally sourced plants’ traits also make them best suited to the local conditions, as well as the pollinators and other animal partners that live here, in ways we may not yet understand. See the Local Ecotype column in this guide’s nursery list to find nurseries that stock Hudson Valley ecotype plants.

This patch of New England aster (Symphyotrichum novi-belgii) shows natural color variation in shades of pink and purple - a visual demonstration of the genetic variability found in wild plant populations, but absent in cloned cultivars. Photo: Adam T. Deen

These young seedlings at Tiny Meadow Farm are grown from ethically wild-collected local ecotype seed from Ecoregion 59, which spans part of Northwestern Connecticut as well as the eastern Hudson Valley. Photo: PCA

Stay Pesticide Free A critical consideration in purchasing native plants is ensuring they are not treated with pesticides that will kill the very pollinators they’re intended to support. Sadly, this is all too common in the US even among plants marketed as “native” or “pollinator friendly”. Banned in Europe since 2013, pesticides called neonicotinoids - potent, long-lasting and devastating neurotoxins - are still widely used in agriculture and the nursery trade throughout the US. Neonicotinoids and other pesticides are often used on “pollinator-friendly” plants in the nursery trade, but neonicotinoids will be banned in New York State beginning in 2027. Until then, be sure to ask your local nursery whether the plants they offer are pesticide-free.

Jumping Worms: Stop the Spread Invasive Asian jumping worms pose a serious threat to native ecosystems, and the nursery trade is a major source of their spread - jumping worms have been found at nurseries throughout the Hudson Valley. Read more about how you can help stop the spread and protect our natural environments in the Jumping Worms Alert section.