Landscape Tips

To help stop the spread of invasive plants, keep the following tips in mind.

Purchase plants that are not invasive plants. Be aware of which plants are invasive before visiting the nursery. If your nursery is selling invasive species, let them know the effects of invasive species on our area and what they can do (and tell their customers) to get the problem under control.

• Clean your lawn mower after mowing in an area with invasive plants. The mower can easily spread seeds of these plants to different areas of your yard.
• Buy seeds certified by the Ohio Department of Agriculture to avoid introducing invasive plants.

Native Ohio Plants to Use in Your Landscape

Trees and Shrubs:
Sugar Maple, Red Maple, Common Persimmon, Shagbark, Hickory, Black Walnut, Sycamore, White Oak, Scarlet Oak, Red Oak, Common Pawpaw, Flowering Dogwood and Sourwood.

Flowers and Grasses:
Native grasses
Native plants for dry soil and part shade
Native plants that attract butterflies
Plants for rain gardens
Native wetland plants
Plants for rock gardens

Native Plant Landscaping Resources

Native Landscaping Books:
Carolyn Harstad, Go Native: Gardening with Native Plants and Wildflowers in the Lower Midwest
Charlotte Adelman and Bernard Schwartz , The Midwestern Native Garden
Lynn M. Steiner, Landscaping with Native Plants of Minnesota
Lynn M. Steiner, Landscaping with Native Plants of Michigan
Guy Sternbert and Jim Wilson, Landscaping with Native Trees

Native Plant Identification Books:
Jack Carman, Wildflowers of Tennessee
Dennis Horn, Wildflowers of Tennessee, the Ohio Valley, and the Southern Appalachians
Kay Yatskievych, Field Guide to Indiana Wildflowers
Richard M. Smith, Wildflowers of the Southern Mountains
Lawrence Newcomb, Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide
Earl Strasbaugh, Flora of West Virginia
Richard W. Pohl, How to Know the Grasses
Lauren Brown, Grasses: An Identification Guide
Agnes Chase, First Book of Grasses 
C.E. Phillips, Some Grasses of the Northeast

Native Landscaping Websites:
US Forest Service "Celebrating Wildflowers"
Everything you would need to know about native flowers, native plant gardens, and pollinators. Includes excellent resources for teachers.
USDA Plants Database
Recorded distributions of plants in North America. Great source to see if species are native or introduced.
Porterbrook Native Plants
Contains value information on developing and implementing native plant gardens.
Ohio Audubon Society Guide to Native Plants
List of plant venders that sell native plants. This list was compiled by the Ohio Chapter of the Audubon Society.