Eastern Red Cedar trees (Juniperus virginiana) grow rapidly and produce abundantly. They have a reputation for being “weedy”, but here within their native range, they offer great benefits to the land, to the wildlife, and to we humans. Read the full article to learn more about the ecological contributions of this amazing native tree!
If you are interested in learning more about the plants native to your region and the amazing benefits they provide, this article is for you. The resources I share in this article will help you create your own dazzling palette of native plants with which you can paint your yard, your flower garden, your vegetable garden, your orchard, or your farm.
When you think of Hoosier cuisine, how many native plant foods come to mind? Check out this article to learn about the history of native food plants in Indiana.
I wasn’t much interested in native plants until I came to live on this land. I knew that native plants were good for the wildlife, and that they could be pretty, but I was only interested in edible plants. I could imagine native plants in the landscaping, because I had seen them there, but I never imagined them in food production. I had never seen them in orchards, I had never seen them in vegetable gardens, and I rarely saw them in garden catalogues. Little by little, the native plants won me over. Did you know many of them are edible? Read the full article to learn more!
Poison Ivy might be the most hated plant around. Although it is a difficult plant to love, this plant has some surprising virtues, and plays an important role in native landscapes. The thing is, this plant is not really here for human beings. It’s here for everybody else. Read the full article to learn more about native plant species Toxicodendron radicans, and its beneficial role for wildlife, insects, and soil.
The Common Blue Violet is a beautiful, edible, native “weed” that can be found in most unsprayed lawns in the Eastern United States. In this article, I show you how to use violet flower petals to make beautiful culinary creations, including Violet Salt, Violet Sugar, Violet-Rimmed Mocktails, and Violet Sugar Cookies. These recipes carry the joy of spring forward into the whole year. It is my hope that by raising awareness of the benefits of this native plant we can encourage more people to ditch the chemicals. Let’s let lawns go wild: for the violets, for the people, and for the pollinators.
The American Chestnut (Castanea dentata) is an almost mythical native tree. Legend has it that prior to the 1900s, a squirrel could travel from Georgia to Maine just by hopping from chestnut branch to chestnut branch, without ever touching the ground. Now the American Chestnut Tree is blighted, but thanks to hybrid chestnut trees we can still enjoy chestnut harvests in our home orchards. Read the full article to learn more about the American Chestnut and for chestnut storage techniques and recipes!
After spending many hours (and frankly, several years) searching for native plant information, seed sources, and plant sources, I created this document filled with book recommendations, tools, links to seed and plant providers, and more. I hope this resource will make it easy for you to jumpstart your own projects!
Indiana has a native wild strawberry, but it’s not the one you think it is.
If you think you’ve had a wild strawberry, but it didn’t taste like a strawberry, you may have been fooled by an invasive lookalike plant! The true native strawberry is wildly delicious. Read the full article for the whole story.
The American Hazelnut (Corylus americana), also known as American Filbert, is a small tree or shrub in the Birch family. Although our native hazelnut is a different species than most hazelnuts available commercially, it is widely reported that the nuts produced by our native tree taste very similar to the more widely available European species. Read the full article to learn more about this amazing native food plant!
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