PUBLISHED: March 2025 by Ron Butler, Conservation Nursery Technician

As we enter March, we are a few weeks from the official start of spring. With this in mind, it is time to think about spring cleanup and prepare for the growing season ahead for native plant landscapes. At the HPB nursery, our planning is driven by the unofficial beginning to each season — in this case, March 1 — and the overlaps between them.

If you are thinking about starting a native garden or a new landscape project, this would be a great time to do so. The basic steps of creating a native landscape for homeowners are to research, designate, and prepare the site(s) where you plan to place the landscape or garden. Once that is done, you can determine your selection of native plants and plant them accordingly with no additional fertilizers needed. When you are choosing plants, it’s important to identify and understand which are annual, biennial, or perennial:

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After determining your plant selection, you can plant them in the desired beds! The final steps of the process include watering, maintaining, and monitoring your native landscape or garden. Keep in mind: During the first year, your native landscape will not look like much. Realistically, it could take up to three years for the plants to look their best based on the species. In fun terms, we say “sleep, creep, then leap.”

• First-year plants will “sleep” — they will not do much in the way of growing or flowering as root establishment is in progress.
• Second-year plants will “creep” — newly planted natives will continue to make roots and the plants will spread out in size.
• Third-year plants will “leap” — they will flower and look their best and may have moved into other locations in your landscape/garden by seed or root, based on the plant species.

If you want to learn more about this process, I highly recommend the Native Plant Society of Texas. Hopefully, this article will inspire you to build and maintain a native landscape!