Vinland Valley Nursery grows hundreds of species of native plants and we want to make learning about and planting them as easy as possible! We’re working on adding a search function to the website to display the geographic origins of each plant listing, but that’s a project for snow days. For now, we’ve compiled a comprehensive list of our native plants with documented origins in Kansas according to the USDA Plants Database.
State lines are not a great way to determine what plants will grow best in varying conditions, so we hope to be able to offer a better way to reference natives that will work best in more relevant garden and climate conditions in the future. Of course, you can always ask us for more specific information on native plant performance. We might tell you to avoid planting an especially vigorous native plant in a small garden bed or suggest a woodland plant that isn’t from Kansas but grows happily in similar conditions across the state line in Missouri. Some very important plants like tulip trees and the shade-tolerant poke milkweed (Ascelpias exaltata) are not native to Kansas proper but still support swallowtails and Monarchs and thrive in our landscapes.
Here’s our current availability of native annuals, perennials, grasses, shrubs, and trees that have their roots in the great state of Kansas! It includes 188 straight natives and 40 naturally occurring selections that offer disease resistance and other beneficial traits that do not alter size, bloom, or foliage. We offer other native selections for small gardens—that’s another blog!
We also grow plants native to the central lower 48 states that have a lot to offer local wildlife and that grow well in our area.