15 Native Plants for the Midwestern Garden
Add low-maintenance beauty to your yard with these tough native plants.
Kelly D. Norris
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Try this enchanting plant in your shade garden. Its hooded, green flowers arise to reveal little Jack poking out against rusty red markings on the inside of the "pulpit." If you're lucky, the flowers will set bright red clusters of berries in the fall for an extra season of interest.
Name: Arisaema triphyllum
Growing Conditions: Shade and moist, well-drained soil
Size: To 2 feet tall
Zones: 4-9
Spiderworts are charming, versatile spring-blooming perennials with grassy foliage and three-petaled flowers. One of our favorites is 'Sweet Kate', which pairs cobalt blue flowers with neon, chartreuse foliage.
Name: Tradescantia sp.
Growing Conditions: Sun or shade and moist, well-drained soil
Size: To 3 feet tall
Zones: 4-9
There's a lot to love about this prairie plant. It's pest, disease, and drought resistant. Plus, it attracts scores of butterflies (including monarchs, whose caterpillars will happily eat the leaves). Its electric-orange flowers sing in the summer garden.
Name: Asclepias tuberosa
Growing Conditions: Full sun, well-drained soil
Size: To 4 feet tall
Zones: 4-10
A spectacular charmer in the fall garden, goldenrod bears fluffy clusters of golden-yellow blooms. One of our favorite selections is 'Fireworks' (named because of the shape of the bloom clusters).
Name: Solidago sp.
Growing Conditions: Full sun and well-drained soil
Size: To 4 feet tall, depending on variety
Zones: 4-8
Milkweeds are butterfly favorites and this one is no exception. Despite its common name, swamp milkweed doesn't mind average garden conditions. Showy pink flowers appear in mid-summer and attract monarch butterflies.
Name: Asclepias incarnata
Growing Conditions: Full sun, moist to average soils
Size: To 5 feet tall
Zones: 3-6
Try compass plant for a dramatic presence in the summer garden. Yellow, sunflower-shaped blooms sit atop towering, 9-foot stems. This incredibly drought-tolerant plant has earned its moniker because the plant aligns itself north to south to conserve water on hot summer days.
Name: Silphium laciniatum
Growing Conditions: Full sun, well-drained soil
Size: To 9 feet tall
Zones: 3-8
One of our all-time favorite grasses, we love little bluestem's bronze-kissed, blue-gray foliage through spring and summer. Then in fall, the blades turn a gorgeous shade of purple-bronze and continue to look good all winter.
Name: Schizachyrium scoparium
Growing Conditions: Full sun, well-drained soil
Size: To 3 feet tall
Zones: 3-9
This easy-to-grow, easy-to-love plant thrives in moist soils rich in organic matter. Its large white flowers are a highlight of the spring border. A vigorous groundcover, it can happily fill in a large space within a growing season.
Name: Anemone canadensis
Growing Conditions: Part sun to shade, well-drained soil
Size: To 2 feet tall
Zones: 3-9
There are a boatload of coneflower varieties on the market, but one great, under-used variety is pale purple coneflower. This top-notch plant bears pink flowers in mid-summer. The bloom color is enhanced by the dark, raspberry-red cones at the center of each bloom. Note: Like many coneflowers, it will self-seed and produce a nice colony in your landscape.
Name: Echinacea pallida
Growing Conditions: Full sun, well-drained soil
Size: To 40 inches tall
Zones: 3-10
This incredible groundcover bears bright wine-red flowers all summer long. Poppy mallow is long lived, drought tolerant, and pest-free. It's perfect for the front of the border or scrambling over a rock wall.
Name: Callirhoe involucrata
Growing Conditions: Full sun, well-drained to dry soil
Size: To 8 inches tall
Zones: 4-8
This native perennial loves water. Good companion plants for this tall, white-flowered plant include cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis) and great blue lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica). Tolerant of light shade, Culver's root will attract butterflies to your garden.
Name: Veronicastrum virginicum
Growing Conditions: Full sun to part shade, moist soils
Size: To 6 feet tall
Zones: 4-7
A quaint ephemeral, bloodroot blooms in early spring producing white, daisy-shaped flowers. The foliage looks like bigfoot's pawprint, but goes dormant by summer (so plant it with Jack-in-the-pulpit so you don't have a bare spot in the garden).
Name: Sanguinaria canadensis
Growing Conditions: Shade and well-drained soil
Size: To 1 foot tall
Zones: 3-10
