About YardNatives
Why this exists
People search "what plants are native to my area" with a particular spot in mind and a nursery trip coming up. The answers they find are usually a regional list of thirty showy perennials, or a nursery catalogue filtered to whatever is in stock. YardNatives starts from the other end: the plants actually recorded growing wild in your county, 498 in a typical one, then narrows them to the spot you are planting.
Where the lists come from
Every county page is built from the USDA PLANTS Database: its county distribution records (which plants have been documented in which county), each plant's native status for the lower 48, Alaska or Hawaii, and, where USDA has them, its growing characteristics - shade tolerance, drought tolerance, soil texture, flooding tolerance, height and bloom time. A plant counts as native only if USDA lists it as native for that region; introduced species are left out. How sparse records and state fallbacks are handled is in why a county list can look short.
What this site will not tell you
It will not tell you that a plant will thrive in your yard. USDA rates growing conditions for about 36% of the natives in a typical county, so a spot filter shows only plants rated for it and counts the rest as unrated - what "rated" means. A county record also does not say how common a plant is or whether it suits a garden; some of the most widespread natives are weeds.
Who runs this
YardNatives is an independently run site. It is not affiliated with USDA, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, any nursery or any native-plant society. If a page ever carries a sponsored link, that is disclosed on the page itself and in the privacy policy.
Written by
Each county page is generated by software, with AI help, from the cited USDA records - no botanist or editor reviews a page before it publishes. The plant lists and ratings come from USDA, not from AI; the software only selects, counts and assembles the sentences around them.