Column | Which native plants should you add to your yard? Look up your state.

Americans were once fiercely patriotic about plants. Thomas Jefferson was a devoted gardener at Monticello who wanted only plants “indigenous to our native soil” in the White House grounds, a friend recalled.

As we celebrate America’s 250th birthday, Americans have seldom been so divided. But we can rediscover our natural birthright: A country with no red and blue states, only green ones.

I worked with the native plant app Wildr Places to help you choose an ideal garden trio of native plants for a typical site in each of the 50 states (plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico).

Select where you live below to get recommendations for indigenous species that are most likely to help your local butterflies, moths, bees and birds — as well as your fellow citizens.

A golden harvest

In the 1730s, British aristocrats eagerly paid the equivalent of a servant’s annual income for a shipment of 100 seeds of American species. Specimens from the New World’s astounding natural bounty conveyed status and wealth. Even today, American magnolias, mountain laurels, azaleas, rhododendrons and sugar maples adorn Europe’s great gardens and avenues.

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Today’s American gardeners, however, often regard their country’s native species as more like weeds than botanical treasures. We’ve overwhelmingly planted species from Asia and Europe in U.S. gardens and lawns, including English boxwood to Japanese hosta. Of the thousands of ornamental plant species sold in American nurseries over the past two centuries, about 70 percent — some 3,587 species — were not native to the continental United States, according to a 2022 peer-reviewed analysis.

Even many species widely considered American — Kentucky bluegrass, Queen Anne’s lace and dandelion among them — are actually imports or stowaways, naturalized after arriving decades or centuries ago.

Yet Jefferson wasn’t alone among early American leaders in envisioning the new agrarian republic taking root in gardens and fields full of native plants, said Andrea Wulf, historian and author of “Founding Gardeners.”

General George Washington commanded America’s revolutionary army while daydreaming of rhododendron blossoms at Mount Vernon. Abigail Adams banished showy crown imperials for having too “monarchical a Name,” preferring a “humble citizen,” the red columbine. (Of course, the continent’s Native peoples were the first to appreciate its plants.)

Jefferson, Washington and Madison planted crops from around the world. But the native plants at Monticello, Mount Vernon and Montpelier, they believed, sustained the new republic’s liberty and prosperity, complementing the promise of its founding documents.

Duck hunters and meadow planters

That patriotism is stirring again, in rural and urban America alike. Hunters and farmers are restoring prairie strips and wetlands, descendants of conservation programs that have helped many waterfowl see population gains since 1970. In wealthy enclaves on the coasts, homeowners are ripping out manicured lawns for meadows. Conservation groups like Wild Ones, National Wildlife Federation and Homegrown National Park have helped thousands of people replace unwanted turf with wildlife gardens and pollinator-friendly lawns.

To make the native plant picker above, I teamed up with Wildr Places, a plant recommendation app designed by scientists and naturalists to transform yards into native wildlife habitat. In each of the 50 states, plus D.C. and Puerto Rico, Wildr reviewed thousands of plant species to choose three: a canopy tree, an understory shrub or small tree, and a flowering perennial for the ground layer.

The primary selection criteria were native, easy-to-grow plants that support bees, moths and butterflies while resisting diseases and pests. Extra points went to endemics (species only found locally), state symbols and showy or beautiful foliage.

To dive deeper, Wildr Places app users can estimate the ecological health of their yard, and get personalized recommendations to support more wildlife, including butterflies, moths and specialist bees.

Most people pick plants to fill their garden. Better, ecologists say, to pick communities. Growing three vertical layers of habitat can feed and shelter wildlife across seasons and life cycles so a yard works more like an ecosystem. The canopy and understory offer nesting cover and host most caterpillars that birds feed their young. Flowers in the ground layer sustain pollinators from spring through fall.

“We should start thinking beyond just flowers,” said Zoe Evans, a master naturalist and head of operations for Wildr Places. “An ecosystem is many different layers. We want people to understand how native ecosystems work: It’s not just plants. It’s communities.”

The final list runs to about 42 trees and 100 shrubs and perennials that can be found in regional nurseries and thrive in a region’s typical yard. If the exact species isn’t available, look for other species in the same genus native to your region. Bees that evolved to gather pollen from one goldenrod species can often visit another goldenrod native to your state.

Picking just a few keystone trees and shrubs can provide an ecological home for other species: More than 90 percent of recorded butterfly and moth diversity is supported by just 14 percent of local plant genera. “We want ecological powerhouses,” Evans said. “This is the fastest way to support all species.”

Why is this so important?

I’m not arguing that you should uproot a garden of thriving foreigners. Non-natives have their place. Many are benign, and some feed wildlife. But shifting the composition of our yards, gardens and public spaces away from near-total dominance by non-native ornamentals and grasses would be transformative.

North America has lost more than 3 billion breeding birds since 1970 — a loss researchers tie to habitat conversion, pesticides and, on residential landscapes, what we choose to plant.

“All of that will turn around if we start to share our human-dominated landscape,” argued Doug Tallamy, of the University of Delaware’s Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology.

Many non-native species are as distasteful (or toxic) to North American insects. And insects, especially caterpillars, are how plants turn into food for other animals, especially birds. “If you don’t have a lot of caterpillars,” he said, “you have a failed food web.”

A clutch of chickadees, Tallamy estimated, eats 6,000 to 9,000 caterpillars to reach adulthood, roughly 350 to 570 daily for more than two weeks. Non-natives can’t supply this. In a 2018 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Tallamy and his co-authors found when non-native plants made up more than 30 percent of plant biomass in homeowners’ yards in the D.C. suburbs, Carolina chickadees in those landscapes failed to reproduce.

The birds were forced to scavenge spiders and other less nutritious invertebrates rather than fat, protein-rich caterpillars that thrive on native plants.

Tallamy is campaigning to build what he calls Homegrown National Parks, pocket habitats to revive native species everywhere from window boxes to farms and corporate campuses, mapped by participants.

We don’t know if backyards can rescue the United States’ declining species. Arthur Shapiro, a professor of evolution and ecology at the University of California at Davis, has called backyard native-plant restoration “a gardening project … not restoration.”

But only about 13 percent of the United States enjoys some form of protection. The vast majority is in private hands. If half of the roughly 40 million acres dedicated to lawns in the United States were converted into habitat, wildlife could reclaim an area close to the size of New England.

“You have this idea that humans are here, and nature is everywhere else,” Tallamy said. “But everyone requires the life support that ecosystems produce. Which means everyone is responsible for good earth stewardship to protect those ecosystems.”

Have questions? The Wildr Places app will walk you through how to go native in your yard. Or ask experts once you sign up for the Less Lawn, More Life Challenge to restore nature in your backyard.