Roland began his native garden 11 years ago after being inspired by the work of Doug Tallamy and wanting to attract many pollinators. Emerging from the cul-de-sac is an orchard worth of fruiting trees including serviceberry, fig, and peach trees. A tall Japanese Persimmon tempts neighbors and passersby to harvest, although Roland insists on leaving the fruits to ripen on the tree. The turfgrass lawn was removed and replaced with numerous shrubs and grasses to attract pollinator species like monarch butterflies, native bees, and even a family of Praying Mantis. The understory in the front yard features pretty sedge, aster, sideoats grama, low grow sumac and blue hyssop.

A narrow paved path that leads to the back garden is shaded by a 40-year-old sweetbay magnolia and bottle brush buckeye. The back garden appears as a tranquil prairie. A pond, filled with frogs, dragonflies, and mostly native aquatic plants is surrounded by purple coneflower, in addition to a meadow of monarda and milkweed, a thornless Blackberry shrub, and a rainwater garden. The back garden is bordered by evergreen conifers, pagoda dogwood and pawpaw. Several bird feeders support goldfinch and hummingbirds. In all, Roland's yard contains 38 species of native trees, including Hackberry, Yellowwood, River Birch, and  Staghorn Sumac, Florida Dogwood, Redbuds, and Sassafras, and 33 species of native shrubs, including Red and Black Chokeberries, Sweetshrub,

New Jersey Tea, Buttonbush, Fringetrees, Summersweet Clethra, Gray Dogwood, Red Twig Dogwood,

American Filbert, Shrubby St. John's Wort, Winterberry, Eastern Anise, Sweetspire, Southern and

Northern Bayberry, Carolina Rose, Elderberry, Nannyberry, Possumhaw,  and Arrowwood Viburnum.

Through hard work and dedication Roland has nurtured a striking landscape that today includes over 1,000 native plants of 188 species. The wild appearance is designed to recreate a functional ecosystem where nesting birds, insects and butterflies can thrive. Roland hopes to reverse the decline of wildlife species and inspire his community.

Shannon McDonald ‘s Knollwood home is full of trees. Glorious, healthy native trees, some young, some old, all thriving in both the front and back yards.

Along the walkway to the front door, there is a cascade of trees that Shannon describes as resembling an ocean wave, their branches building a crest of energy near the house that swoops out as if it were a wave crashing towards the street. Among these front-door trees are a nonnative but stunning Yoshino Cherry, Paperbark Maple, Red Bud, Buckeye, and a Dogwood, with flowering native plants beneath them.

In the 9 years Shannon and her family have lived in their Knollwood home, she and her husband have cared for at least 16 native trees that line her side yard and form beautiful wooded areas in the back. Many of these trees are mature and quite large, including a massive redbud, which Shannon thinks might be a county or state record for its size. There are two American hollies,  Eastern Red Cedar, Dogwood, Little Girl Magnolia, Iron Wood, as well as Princeton Elm, and an American Bladdernut.

Because they have young kids, the McDonalds have kept grassy areas in the back for outdoor play, including a rollocking hill for winter sledding. This area is designed as a part shade prairie space, which features a mixture of flowering native plants, woody shrubs and trees, including a Bald Cypress, Loblolly pines, and a Black Gum. Shrubs include native blueberry, Oak leaf hydrangea, Shagbush serviceberry, Ninebark, and spicebush. The lighting for the outdoor space is down lit, and stumps and cut hardwoods are strategically placed to allow for burrowing insects. Shannon has also been involved in her community’s effort to plant native grasses and plants in the community’s median strip.

Elaine Dietz’s  native plant garden in the front yard of her Lake Walker home has been a labor of love for over 15 years.  She and her husband decided in 2010 to convert the front yard to a turf-free native meadow to provide an ecosystem that supports wildlife.  Blue Water Baltimore drew up a plan for their yard and installed the original native plants.  Since then Elaine has been adding to the original design and this year she added 5 hexagonal raised cedar beds, planted with a combination of native plants, to give more structure to the meadow.  She chose the hexagonal shape she said as “a nod to the honeycomb to further emphasize our support of pollinators.”

There is a great variety of native plants in the meadow including monarda, butterfly weed, great blue lobelia, liatris, golden alexander, baptisia, asters, false Solomon’s seal, Joe -Pye -Weed , two black chokeberry bushes and an American beauty berry.  A large silver maple provides shade as well as some native dog woods. There are two bird baths and some insect watering stations in the front as well as a rain barrel and another bird bath in the back yard.

Elaine is deeply committed to the idea of replacing traditional lawns with native plants and she has persevered in her commitment over the years even when not everyone in her neighborhood appreciated her efforts.  She has added a “Pollinator Friendly Garden” sign to her yard as well as two posters about the value of leaving leaves on our yards and the value of native plants for birds and other creatures to help spread the word

Tucked away on a corner in Historic Lutherville, the Ward home serves up a smorgasbord of Native Plants.  A tour must start with admiring the century old Ash tree shading over the home.  The Wards have been treating this Ash and a smaller one for emerald ash borer disease to protect and defend these beauties.  Other shade sources are a magnificent silver maple on the other side of the home, an eastern redbud, flowering dogwood, eastern hemlock, Carolina allspice, and American hollies.  A large snag that has been left standing for it’s wildlife value.

Pam became interested in creating a yard to support wildlife after she began working at a nature center.  She and her husband, David, added a pond with a fountain surrounded by American beautyberry, jack in the pulpit, jewel weed, violets, native ferns and moss, blue-eyed grass, coral honeysuckle, white turtlehead and more. Birds, frogs, and snakes visit the pond regularly.

This garden is truly a family affair.  Everyone in the household is enthusiastic about supporting the local ecosystem.  After developing an interest in botany in college, Josh, age 24, is focusing on creating a shade garden under the smaller ash and hemlock trees in the front corner of the yard.  Josh has removed English Ivy and vinca to plant native ferns, asters, columbine, stonecrop, goat’s beard, clustered black snakeroot, black huckleberry, longstyle sweet root, low st. John’s wort, agrimony, black cohosh, hairy alumroot, Venus’ pride, cream white gentian, mayapple, and many more.  These plants have been grown from collected seeds and cuttings.  It will be exciting to see how they grown and fill in over time.  Josh focuses on including less common native varieties to help support insects that need these more rare plants.

In 2020, during the COVID shutdown, Meghan, age 22, began gardening in a way that respects and supports the native wildlife.  She started by keeping plants that were growing when she stopped mowing and focusing on adding host plants.  In the bottom corner of the yard, where it floods frequently, she started a rain garden.  This garden features too many plants to list, but includes: Culver’s root, whirled coreopsis, yarrow, sea oats, great blue lobelia, white snakeroot, fox-glove beardtongue, milkweed, golden Alexander, sweet pepperbush, bee balm, and Joe-pye, fire, and poke weeds.  Along the back fence is a sun-loving garden with coneflowers, American germander, cup plants, dense blazing star, wild blue indigo, black eyed Susans, butterfly weed, limber honeysuckle, Virginia sweetspire, and more.

The Schaffer’s garden started 16-17 years ago with Pinehurst Nursery’s design and installation of beds that relied on traditional landscape shrubs and perennials such as yews, Japanese azalea, hostas. Over the past 4 years they’ve worked to replace nonnatives with natives from Herring Run Nursery.

The tree canopy includes a huge red oak on the west side of the front yard and a large sugar maple to the east. When a red maple in front died, they replaced it with a black gum from Herring Run. This year they planted several American Persimmons in the strip between the sidewalk and street, and Brian plans to eventually replace the grass there with stones and some perennials. They’ve added a serviceberry in the back yard. Native shrubs include viburnum dentatum, witch hazel, fothergilla, native rhododendron. blueberry.

The overall design definitely provides “cues to care”, with defined beds and well-placed shrubs and taller perennials as anchors. Curb appeal is a plus, and when he’s out weeding or planting, Brian invites neighbors to check out the natives. He and Jane promote the benefits that native gardening practices provide to local ecosystems, and Brian also likes to give away plant babies when volunteers pop up.

The variety of native plants is huge. Group massing of specific plants is intentional with a cluster of winterberry shrubs in the front beds, clethra along a side fence, and mountain mint, amsonia Eastern Blue Star and itea virginica along the back walkway. A side bed that faces the street has silphium (cup plant), beauty berry.

The front beds include groupings of butterfly weed, garden phlox, spigelia marilandica (Indian pink) and penstemon, among others. Brian’s trying to nurture dwarf crested iris and sedum ternatum to fill in as “green mulch” so he can continue to decrease the use of wood chips. He loves shopping at Herring Run Nursery and “shoehorns” in new natives that catch his eye. He eventually wants to replace more of the non-natives with native perennials and shrubs.

There’s a small pond in front and a birdbath in back, plus a native bee house and a bat house high on the back wall of the house. They also keep honeybees next to their back patio. Other habitats include a brush pile.

Sharon Huber-Plano and her husband have lived in their residential neighborhood in Lutherville since 1992. As a landscape architect, Sharon took a Continuing Education course on native plants and was fascinated with the ecological benefits they provide to a landscape and to its community. She decided to replace the front lawn with native landscape, and the first step was to remove a large stand of pachysandra, vinca, and English ivy - plants that were a backbone of the older, conventional landscape.  She created a mini-meadow in the front yard, and replaced  the turf grass with a base layer of native grasses and sedges because of their beautiful foliage and their significant wildlife value. She supplemented the base of grasses with flowering species to provide color and environmental benefits throughout the growing season.

The front yard is attractively arranged in groupings. There is a number of native plant groups including carex sedge, blue stem, Blazing Star liatris, coral bells,  mountain mint, river oats, foam flowers, 5 fothergilla shrubs, a Haas Halo hydrangea, Virginia sweetspire, viburnum nudum shrub, Prairie Dropseed, and hairy beardtongue.

Sharon worked with a local landscape contractor to install a boulder to create a re-circulating fountain to act as a bird bath.  The fountain is very striking and adds to the attractiveness of the garden. There is also a small pond.

A river birch provides a focal point to the shade garden in one area of the front yard, surrounded by sedges. A path of large flag stones in the middle of the front yard also give structure to the garden areas. There are several other trees on the property including an American holly, a willow oak, a service berry and a red oak.

There is a wildlife habitat sign in the front yard. which she won in a neighborhood garden contest.

Heather Poff’s corner lot in Rodgers Forge is an example of how a compact yard can be gradually converted from traditional landscaping to an attractive, and beneficial, ecosystem. She shifted her gardening practices about eight years ago when she began planting natives, and she’s been adding more every year, noting that they have out-performed the non-natives.

The showstopper is a pie-shaped side garden that borders the street and alley. Against the backdrop of the original non-native hedge, she has planted well-maintained masses of natives such as amsonia, coreopsis, milkweed, blue mistflower, asters and northern sea oats, anchored on the north by a ninebark shrub. Her favorite season is fall and she wants to provide color and texture all four seasons. The non-native liriope provides a border that she aims to replace eventually. Her latest project has been replacing traditional foundation shrubs with inkberry, mountain laurel, native rhododendron and native honeysuckles and geraniums.

Her 1950s rowhome is shaded on the side and rear by a 75-year-old American elm and an Eastern red cedar planted soon after construction. In front is a dogwood that reminds her of her childhood home in Pennsylvania, and along the side is a Japanese maple that started as a cutting from her mother-in-law’s yard. She has also kept hostas that house a family of bunnies. There is a birdbath and a rain barrel, and Heather leaves the perennial stalks and leaves all winter to provide habitat and food sources for wildlife.

The home’s location to the east of the Rodgers Forge tot lot means lots of walking traffic. When neighbors with children stop to admire her side bed, Heather is quick to share flowers as well as information about how the natives are low-maintenance, good for the environment and just plain beautiful.

Michelle and Adam’s home in Idylewylde captivates attention the moment you drive up. The ‘hellstrip’ in front of their home is lushly planted, and on our visit the narrow-leaf mountain mint was buzzing with pollinators. The landscape has improved dramatically over the past four years, after Adam managed to peel back a thick layer of invasive porcelain berry that had enveloped the mature trees in their yard, and dug out by hand a huge stand of invasive running bamboo.

Michelle, who is inspired by the work of Doug Tallamy and "Living Landscapes", the book he co-authored with Rick Darke, has been in charge of choosing native plants that include Eastern columbine (Aquilegia canadensis), coreopsis, Salvia lyrata, Amsonia, coral honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens), bee balm, butterfly weep, and swamp milkweed.

They have planted many native shrubs, which include oak-leafed hydrangea, clethra, fothergilla, Virginia sweetspire, and witch hazel. A red maple tree that was already in the yard has been joined by a willow oak, arborvitae, and white pine. A vegetable garden is in the side yard, and there are plans to incorporate even more native plants in the coming years.

When Jonathan and Hilary Hargis moved into their West Towson home five years ago, the first thing they tackled was a huge thicket of forsythia in the backyard that unfortunately was also filled with poison ivy. Digging it out uncovered many large rocks, which were collected and used to line the pathways that lead to and surround a pond that invites birds and other wild visitors. Several mature trees, including a native cherry, and a Pin Oak provide dappled shade that allow ostrich ferns, Indian pink (Spigelia marilandica), goat’s beard, and a native cultivar hydrangea, “Hass Halo’ and many other native shade-loving plants thrive.

Jonathan recently began adding native plants to this garden, which is beautifully designed without the help of a professional. It provides a quiet space that invites visitors to take their time, and enjoy native plants that include Heuchera, Mountain mint, Sedum ternatum, Little bluestem, and Northern Sea oats. The Hargises have planted many native shrubs, including Witch hazel, Clethra, Ninebark, Inkberry, Viburnum and Rhododendron, as well as several native trees, including Dogwood and a Redbud. A seating area with a firepit provides a spot for their young family to relax in this beautiful backyard garden.

In the five years since Beth and her family moved into their home, they have been slowly shifting from mostly nonnative plantings to mostly natives.

Starting in 2021 they addressed the overgrown garden plot that runs adjacent to a frequently used sidewalk. This maturing garden is packed with black eyed susans, early goldenrod, Christmas fern, foxglove beardtongue with some oakleaf hydrangea and packera aura.  It bursts with color.

In fall of 2024, having lost a big tree and created a very sunny patch along their driveway, they hired No Pink Flamingos in Design to clear and landscape this area. Their goal was to attract wildlife with flowering plants to attract pollinators and enhance curb appeal.  Six inkberry shrubs have been planted as a natural divider between property lines and driveways. The garden strip also includes a large drift of coreopsis, black eyed susans, monarda didyma (scarlet bee balm), eastern bluestar, and oakleaf hydrangea. The result is a cheerful, colorful area buzzing with native bees.

In addition to the garden plots, the family has taken advantage of the Blue Water Baltimore neighborhood tree program to add a Willow Oak and American Plane to their collection of trees.

Kate Searle began working to create a native plant garden when she and her husband, Kieren, bought their house two years ago. They are originally from the U.K., and are eager to learn all they can about plants native to our area. Starting from scratch, Kate created an eye-catching oval bed in the front yard with butterfly weed, bee balm, obedient plant, spiderwort, rudbeckia, devil’s beggarticks (Bidens frondosa), penstemon, Virginia groundcherry, roundleaf ragwort (Packera obovate) and sneezeweed. The bed is nicely anchored by tall wrinkleleaf goldenrod. She calls the pollinator bed the first step in her “gradual lawn removal project.”

Kate, who helped organize the Rodgers Forge plant swap this year, is passionate about adding natives. She has gotten most of her new plants from swaps and exchanges. She’s added some native shrubs, including a chokeberry and buttonbush, a native dogwood along the side fence and sweet fern. In the front yard, four mature American hollies help screen the traffic on York Road and serve as a food source and habitat. The tree canopy also features an American basswood and an American, or white, ash, and in back there are two mature eastern white pines and another American holly. The backyard was filled with invasive vines and groundcover that the Searles removed manually, and in the tangled mess they uncovered a handmade birdbath that now provides a pleasing focal point. Kieren has started a clover lawn area in the back to benefit pollinators and reduce the need for mowing.

They’ve installed a raised-bed vegetable garden on the south-facing fence line, as well as a compost bin and brush pile that can be seen from a rear pathway that’s busy, especially during the school year when Dumbarton Middle School students walk by. The Searles use every opportunity to explain what they’re doing in the yard to create habitat and regenerate the local ecosystem. It’s a work in progress, as they continue to research natives that can replace non-natives planted by the previous owners.