Native plant landscaping and permaculture design in the Front Range of Colorado
Native Plants
Check out these native beauties that were growing in the prairies and mountains of Colorado long before colonization. These are all excellent choices for urban landscaping and habitat restoration. Each of these plants has its own culinary/medicinal uses, ecological benefits, and unique vibe. (You can learn more via our public Colorado Native Plants Spreadsheet.)
If you’re approaching this page to find new plants for your garden, consider sitting down and taking your time with it. You might have an especially rich experience if you try our “How To Sit With The Land” exercise as you look at this page.
A plant that’s a good fit for you and your garden may just “feel right.” Which ones call to you?
SUNNY
Scarlet Bugler knows how to seduce hummingbirds.
Prairie Smoke bursts into fairy plumes in the early spring.
Bumble bees and monarch caterpillars love burying their fuzzy faces in Butterfly Milkweed. Who wouldn’t?
Rocky Mountain Penstemon (purple) is a famous friend of local bees; Lance-Leaf Coreopsis (yellow) will be quick to bring color to your yard. Blue flax in the background.
Prairie Winecups will cover your yard in a carpet of short joyful poppies.
Blue Flax drops its petals every day and grows new ones.
There is a tiny native bee that refuses to eat anything other than Globemallow pollen, and likes to fall asleep inside the petals. One can hardly blame it.
Purple Prairie Clover is a party starter that adds nitrogen to your soil.
Prickly Poppy is an annual that will be bright-eyed before any of the other flowers have risen. That’s why it looks like the eyes of early-morning coffee drinkers.
Prairie Coneflower alleviates pain when drunk as a tea.
Rocky Mountain Blazing Star makes microphones for butterfly bands.
Little Sunflower is one of the most supportive plants for native specialist bees, and it will grow no matter what you do to it.
Western Wallflower. Funny name for a flamenco fire dancer.
If an alien and a fairy built a dream house together, it would totally look like Rocky Mountain Bee Plant.
Prairie Zinnia eats rocks for breakfast, and will light up your yard.
Leadplant, a 2-4′ bush, fixes nitrogen in the soil. It also looks like it’s from outer space.
Tufted Evening Primrose flowers attract hummingbird moths and smell like perfume you can’t afford.
A monarch butterfly alights on a native azure sage wildflower, in an RLD prairie garden that was once an HOA turfgrass park.
Side Oats Grama offers rich, bold texture.
Little Bluestem glows in red all winter.
Blue Grama is soft and sweet, with feathery wings all winter.
SHADY
Harebell will catch your breath in its lips and save it for a rainy day.
Rose Milkweed, the official crown of the Swamp Fairy Queen and a host for monarch caterpillars. (Not xeric.)
Pussytoes is a host plant for the Painted Lady butterfly.
Beautiful Barneby’s Columbine can somehow handle both shade and low water.
Rocky Mountain Columbine is a stunner that tastes like heaven. (Not xeric.)
Friendly Golden Columbine melts in your mouth!
Sticky Geranium smiles at you brightly from low-water shady spots that others might consider inhospitable.
Drummond’s Catchfly is delightfully weird. It’s like the Willy Wonka of plants.
Golden Currant is grace and generosity incarnate. Always has juicy berries for you.
Goldenrods are pollinators superstars, and there are tons of native options for different microclimates.
Some First Nations people used a smoke smudge of smooth blue aster to revive the unconscious and in sweat baths.
In the wind, Pearly Everlasting’s flowers make a delicate paper rustling sound.
Blue Western Spiderwort is good for your soul. Edible and medicinal.
Snowberry: Turkish Delight for birds.
Bee Balm flowers kinda look like fairy cafes.
Wild Strawberry is cute and delicious!
Appalachian sedge is a juicy sweet groundcover. (East U.S. native, not CO native.)
Creeping Colorado Holly is colorful year-around, and offers fat-filled winter berries for hungry birds.
