ReWild "Bee and Butterfly" Showy Sun Design by Rusty Schmidt

We often get questions from new rewilders who are looking for ideas on how to get started with a native plant garden.

Unfortunately, one size does not fit all. The size of the yard, the sunshine, slope, moisture, soil and other factors often dictate what will be successful in each yard. That said, there are some common design concepts and starting points that work well for many of us.

ReWild works with expert Native Plant landscape designers to bring you ideas based on their years of experience. The expert design below from Rusty Schmidt, one of Long Island’s premier Landscape Ecologists, provides year-round interest with plants guaranteed to be blooming from late May well into October. Their contrasting colors and varying heights are designed to show off each in the verdant background of the others.

This garden is designed for spaces receiving at least six hours of full sun. The design features plants of varying heights from 1.5 to 6 feet, with contrasting colors. The plants are tolerant of a wide variety of soils, from clay, loam or sand predominating. All of the plants are hosts to pollinators of different species.

The ReWIld “Bee and Butterfly” Showy Sun Design is a pollinator- friendly, showy garden with a number of easy-to-grow, widely available native plants that require only low maintenance.

garden design

See table below for numbers of different plants and spacing details.

garden colors each month

At the front of the design, we have late blooming Asters, paired with Monarch-hosting Butterfly Milkweed.

The center is held by masses of Coneflowers, Coreopsis and Goldenrod, flanked by bushes of New Jersey Tea and Ox-eye Daisy on either side.

In the rear, we have the taller False Blue Indigo, Ironweed and Anise Hyssop, with a patch of Blazingstar to draw mid-summer interest.

All plants in this design are pollinator magnets. This design, targeted at an area of about 300 square-feet can easily be adjusted to smaller or larger spaces, as well as various shapes by controlling the spacing and numbers of plants.

About the designer

Rusty Schmidt is a landscape ecologist who has worked with native plants and ecosystems over several decades. Rusty Schmidt designs and constructs alternate ways of managing stormwater runoff, creating hundreds of designs for habitat restorations, complete restorations of ecosystems, and many rain gardens bio-infiltration swales, bio-retention basins and stormwater ponds, ranging in size from a small backyard to multi-acre projects.

He works for Nelson, Pope and Voorhis in Melville, NY, and is also President of the Long Island Native Plants Initiative. Rusty is an Adjunct Professor in the Horticulture Department at Farmingdale State College, NY. He co-authored three books “Plants for Stormwater Design ”, Vol 1 and 2, and a homeowner’s guide, “ Blue Thumb Guide to Raingardens”.

Rusty has been a long time collaborator and mentor of ReWild Long Island.

Rusty Schmidt