Resources

-Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants by Doug Tallamy

-Pollinators of Native Plants: Attract, Observe and Identify Pollinators and Beneficial Insects with Native Plants by Heather Holm

-The Living Landscape: Designing for Beauty and Biodiversity in the Home Garden by Rick Darke & Doug Tallamy

-Planting in a Post-Wild World: Designing Plant Communities for Resilient Landscapes by Thomas Rainer & Claudia West

-New Naturalism: Designing and Planting a Resilient, Ecologically Vibrant Home Garden by Kelly D. Norris

-Prairie Up: An Introduction to Natural Garden Design by Benjamin Vogt

-Native Meadowscaping: Designing, Installing, and Maintaining Native Meadows by Indigenous Landscapes

-Wasps: Their Biology, Diversity, and Role as Beneficial Insects and Pollinators of Native Plants by Heather Holm

-Wildflowers and Plant Communities of the Southern Appalachian Mountains and Piedmont: A Naturalist's Guide to the Carolinas, Virginia, Tennessee, and Georgia by Timothy P. Spira

-The Bees in Your Backyard: A Guide to North America's Bees by Joseph S. Wilson Olivia Messinger Carril

-The Southeast Native Plant Primer: 225 Plants for an Earth-Friendly Garden by Larry Mellichamp & Paula Gross

-The New England Wild Flower Society Guide to Growing and Propagating Wildflowers of the United States and Canada by William Cullina

-Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer

-Flora of the Southeastern United States by Alan S. Weakley - PDFs available for FREE to download here! It is also available to download as individual state floras on the same page.

-National Wildlife Federation Native Plants Finder - Enter your ZIP code to find a list of native plants organized by how many caterpillar species they host, also naming which species are hosted by which plants.

-Virginia Native Plant Society - Our state organization for native plant education and conservation.

-Plant NoVA Natives - Focuses on northern VA, but is an excellent resource nonetheless with many educational articles that are applicable to the rest of the state and much of the Southeast.

-Xerces Society: Pollinator Conservation Resources for the Mid-Atlantic - Great information on how to build and maintain pollinator-friendly habitat, including lists of plants that are of special importance to bees and other pollinators.

-Monarch Gardens - Although the author is based in Nebraska and so some of the plants he discusses are not native to VA, there’s still a lot to learn here about native garden design and maintenance.

-North Carolina Botanical Garden - Many resources for native plant gardening, including a pollinator toolkit available for download.

-Homegrown National Park - A conservation organization focused on creating habitat through native plantings by homeowners, with a variety of educational content on the topic.

-Mt. Cuba Center - Performs large trials of native plants and their cultivars to determine which are most popular with pollinators as well as being highly suited for growing in gardens. If you want to look up if a particular cultivar is valuable for pollinators, this is the place to look!

-Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center - Hosts one of the most comprehensive online databases of native plants, including many species which are rare or unknown in horticulture.

-Missouri Botanical Garden Plant Finder - A database of over 7,500 plants and cultivars, including a large number of natives.

-North Carolina Extension Plant Toolbox - This link leads directly to the native plants in the database, which provides loads of invaluable information on the cultivation of over 1,000 native species, including many which are difficult to find in other horticultural databases.

-Biota of North America Program - THE best online resource for plant range maps down to a county level. Maps are grouped by plant genus, so to find a particular species’ range map, go to the page for its genus.

-Pollen Specialist Bees of the Eastern US - A treasure trove of information on oligolectic bees, including which plants host the most specialists and which plants attract what bee species.

-NatureServe Explorer - The ecosystem search tool is a great way to learn about natural plant communities. Searching by a dominant plant species (such as canopy trees for forests and grasses for grasslands) will bring up information on plant communities associated with that species. Mimicking these plant communities is a great starting point in ecological garden design.

-The Native Plant Podcast

-Backyard Ecology

-In Defense of Plants

-A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach

-Flora of Virginia - A mobile version of the state flora, extremely helpful for identification and range maps.

-iNaturalist - Get identification help, from both a photo ID algorithm as well as human experts, learn what plants and animals have been seen in your area, and share your sightings with scientists.

-Rockd - Learn about the geology of your current GPS location.