Native Plant Finder by State
Published:
Pick your state for a three layer native planting: one canopy tree, one understory shrub or small tree, and one flowering ground layer perennial. This is not a plan to remove your lawn. It is a plan for the edges, the borders and the tree layer around the turf you are keeping, which is where nearly all of the ecological work available to an ordinary yard actually sits. Every species is checked against the USDA PLANTS Database for its distribution and nativity in the state you choose, and every wildlife figure is a published genus level count, labelled as such.
Choose your state
Hawaii is not listed. Every keystone species this dataset covers that USDA records in Hawaii is flagged introduced there, so there is nothing to recommend. That gap is explained on the methodology page.
Why the tree layer matters most
North America has lost more than 3 billion breeding birds since 1970 (Rosenberg et al., Science, 2019). A single chickadee brood eats roughly 6,000 to 9,000 caterpillars before it fledges, and those caterpillars come overwhelmingly from native woody plants. Around 14 percent of native plant genera support roughly 90 percent of caterpillar species, which is why the canopy choice outweighs every other decision in a yard. Only about 13 percent of land in the United States has protected status, so most of the habitat that could exist is on land somebody owns privately.
Common questions
What does a three layer native planting mean?
A canopy tree, an understory shrub or small tree, and a flowering ground layer perennial. The point is that a garden works as a community rather than a collection. The canopy and understory produce most of the caterpillars that birds feed their young, and the ground layer keeps pollen and nectar available across the season.
Do I have to remove my lawn to do this?
No. This tool is built for the edges, borders and tree layer around turf you are keeping. A single canopy tree and a planted bed along one fence line do most of the ecological work available to a typical yard without changing how the lawn itself is used.
Where do the caterpillar numbers come from?
They come from the National Wildlife Federation keystone plant sheets, which publish counts from Dr Doug Tallamy's research team at the University of Delaware. Every count is published at genus level, not species level, and this tool labels it that way on every figure.
How is a plant confirmed native to my state?
Each species is checked against the USDA PLANTS Database for both its recorded distribution in that state and its nativity status for the continental region the state sits in. Anything flagged introduced for that region is dropped rather than shown.
Which of these plants suit a watering ban?
Species whose USDA drought tolerance is listed as High or Medium are marked with a drought tolerance badge. Where USDA publishes no drought value for a species, no badge is shown rather than a guess.
Nativity, distribution and growing characteristics from the USDA NRCS PLANTS Database. Caterpillar and specialist bee counts from the National Wildlife Federation Keystone Native Plants sheets, which draw on research by Dr Doug Tallamy (University of Delaware) and Jarrod Fowler. All wildlife counts are genus level. Full sourcing, selection criteria and the limits of this data are set out on the methodology page.