Landscaping with native plants has never been hotter, with an increasing number of homeowners falling for their ease of care, environmental benefits, and support for bees and other beneficial pollinators.
Plus, some of these native beauties will knock your socks off, with beautiful blooms, impressive fall foliage and pretty berries.
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- What is Landscaping with Native Plants?
- Best Native Trees for Idaho Landscaping
- Best Native Shrubs for Idaho Landscaping
- Best Native Perennials for Idaho Landscaping
- Benefits of Landscaping with Native Plants
- Common Myths About Native Plants
- Native Plant Design: Local Landscapers Can Help
What plants are native to Idaho? So many, from the majestic Colorado spruce to lacy yarrow flowers to striking red twig dogwood. You’ll be surprised at the variety.
Keep reading for more about the best native Idaho plants for landscaping, including:
What is Landscaping with Native Plants?
If you’ve lived somewhere your entire life, you’re a native—same thing with plants.
Native plants are varieties that are indigenous to a specific area. They’ve always been here.
Idaho native plants are from here, so they’re automatically at home. Once they have established themselves, they require less water, fertilizer, and maintenance than non-native plants.
Landscaping with native plants also helps pollinators, such as bees and butterflies, which are particularly attracted to these plants. Using Idaho native plants is a big win.
Some plants are called “adaptive” or "naturalized," which means they didn’t originate here, but they’ve been here long enough to acclimate to the environment, so they’re happy and healthy in Idaho. They’ve grown to have many of the same benefits of native varieties. That means you have an even wider selection for your Idaho Falls landscape design.
Idaho is home to a diverse range of native plants, including trees, flowers, shrubs, and grasses. Mixing a variety in your landscape can help create planting beds with four-season appeal and offers environmental benefits, too.
What are the best native Idaho plants for landscaping? Kim Rubert and Kirk Jeppesen, landscape designers at Outback Landscape, share a few of their favorites.
Best Native Trees for Idaho Landscaping
Trees are the towering building blocks of your landscaping. Check out these native picks:
Colorado Spruce
Yes, Colorado got its name on this beauty but it’s native here, too.
Jeppesen loves using this tree with its beautiful, dense foliage that varies in color from blue to green — as long as your property is big enough. It can get up to 60 feet tall with a spread of 10 to 20 feet. It’s great as a majestic specimen tree and is a dependable windbreak, too.
Rocky Mountain Juniper
This graceful evergreen with a columnar shape and drooping blue-green foliage is a real workhorse in the landscape.
It provides year-round structure in the garden, has attractive reddish-gray bark, and offers a great habitat for wildlife.
Weeping White Spruce
This native spruce’s drooping branches covered with short, densely packed needles add a graceful, weeping effect to the landscape.
What flowering trees are native to Idaho? Two standouts:
Black Locust is known for its pink flowers and ability to serve as a host plant for native pollinator larvae.
Rocky Mountain Maple produces small, yellowish-green flowers in small clusters that appear in early spring, coinciding with the emergence of new leaves. But stick around for the real show, when its autumn colors explode in yellow to a pinkish gold.
Best Native Shrubs for Idaho Landscaping
Shrubs add texture, color and provide food and habitat for wildlife. Idaho has quite a few native beauties:
Red Twig Dogwood
Red twig dogwood is deciduous, so you’ll enjoy its leafy greenery in the summer months, but you’ll be rewarded with its striking red twigs in the winter. This popular shrub grows up to eight feet tall, spreads several feet wide and has pretty white flowers in the summer — a superstar for your Idaho Falls landscape design.
Chokecherry
Butterflies will love you if you plant this pretty plant. They love its bounty of cylindrical white flowers that emerge in the spring. The flowers give way to dark red berries in the summer, which attract a multitude of birds. Bonus: its foliage turns golden yellow to orange in autumn.
Oregon Grape
These low-maintenance native Idaho plants feature glossy, holly-like leaves and offer yellow flowers in late spring, as well as attractive dark blue berries.
Ninebark
Rubert loves this great medium-sized Idaho native plant, which will show off clusters of pretty white flowers in late spring and light rose fall color. The ‘Diablo’ variety will wow you with stunning deep purple foliage.
Best Native Perennials for Idaho Landscaping
What are the best native Idaho perennials for landscaping? The array of diverse perennials might surprise you:
Common Yarrow
Common yarrow’s lacy pale yellow flower clusters last all summer. Even its leaves are pretty, forming smaller leaflets that give them a delicate, fernlike appearance.
Blue Flax
Yes, its striking blue flowers are the big draw here, but its needle-like blue-green leaves are interesting, too. This Idaho native plant offers a nice perk: deer don’t like it. You’ve probably seen it growing wild in meadows and on mountain trails. It looks great planted in masses, just like in the wild.
Scotch Bluebell
Another blue beauty, this Idaho native plant is as pretty as it sounds, with clusters of bright blue bell-shaped flowers on a compact plant that will happily spread. It blooms for a solid four to six weeks.
Coneflower
The ultimate easy-going plant, coneflower thrives in full sun and partial shade. Birds, bees and butterflies love it. Pick your favorite color, from purple or pink to white, yellow and orange. Plant them in masses for a truly impressive display in your Idaho Falls native landscape design. These low-maintenance plants even thrive with little to no fertilizer.
P.S. Leave the tasty seed heads to make your neighborhood birds happy.
Columbine
These Idaho native plants easily impress with their delicate, red and yellow bell-like flowers, which hummingbirds and other pollinators love.
Black-Eyed Susan
These charming, carefree Idaho native plants feature daisy-like flowers with dark centers and vibrant golden petals. They start flowering in midsummer and continue until the temperature drops well below freezing in the fall. A cheerful, hardy American classic, it’s a member of the sunflower family.
Benefits of Landscaping With Native Plants
Many native plants are beautiful, adding pretty flowers, foliage and fruit to your landscaping. But landscaping with native plants offers plenty of other benefits, too:
Native plants help our pollinator pals. Bees, in particular, are having a tough time, dying from a variety of factors, including pesticides, drought, habitat destruction, air pollution, and global warming, among others.
Native plants offer a free buffet of berries, nuts and seeds for grateful wild critters. Some native blooms provide nectar for hummingbirds.
Native plants also provide important shelter for wildlife, especially when planted in layers—plant layers of native Idaho plants, from low perennials to mid-level shrubs to tall trees. Native birds love the protective shelter this provides for breeding.
Native plants thrive in their natural environment, requiring less watering, weeding, and pest control. Natives naturally resist diseases and pests. They’re typically well-adapted to their environment. That means you hardly have to do anything — just enjoy them.
Landscaping with native plants helps prevent the spread of invasive species. When plants are introduced that aren't native to our area, they can become invasive, choking out beneficial plants that birds and animals need to survive.
They save you money, by needing less water, fertilizer, and pesticides than non-native plants.
Common Myths About Native Plants
Don’t believe everything you hear about landscaping with native plants.
Let’s bust a few myths:
Myth: Native plants aren’t as bright and colorful.
Fact: Check out purple coneflower’s violet petals; columbine’s pretty red or yellow blooms; the fiery scarlet hue of burning bush; the vivid winter stems of red twig dogwood; the yellow flowers and dark blue berries of Oregon grape. You get the idea.
Myth: You don’t have many varieties to choose from.
Fact: What plants are native to Idaho?
Idaho is home to more than 2,500 native plant species, according to the Idaho Native Plant Society.
Good luck trying to fit them all in your yard.
Myth: Native plants cost more.
Fact: Plants don’t cost more just because they’re native. Sometimes, certain plants (both native and non-native) will have a higher price tag because there’s a shortage of them. It’s a classic case of supply and demand.
Native Plant Design: Local Landscapers Can Help
Just like with any plants, you can’t just go crazy grabbing a bunch of Idaho native plants you love and stuffing your landscape.
Even though natives love it here, they still have certain light requirements — some crave sunlight, while others prefer shade.
They come in different heights, and you need to consider how to group them in your landscaping.
You’ll need some planning and professional knowledge to decide what to plant to achieve four-season color, as well as what Idaho native plants look great when planted together.
Outback Landscape pros will help you choose native plants that thrive in your specific soil and light conditions, look great in your landscaping, fit your space, and bring you joy whenever you look at them.
How to Choose the Best Native Plants for Idaho? Trust Outback
So many fantastic native plants to consider. Then, while you enjoy the beauty, you can also feel great about creating less maintenance and providing a plentiful bounty for wildlife and pollinators.
First up, partner with a landscaping company that’s an expert in landscape design and installation in Idaho Falls, including working with native plants.
We’d love to help.
Outback Landscape is a full-service landscaping company offering landscape design in Boise and Idaho Falls. We install beautiful, functional landscapes and stay with you for the long haul, taking care of your property through all four seasons.
We serve residential and commercial properties in Idaho Falls, Rexburg, and Pocatello, Idaho, as well as Bonneville, Madison, and Bannock counties. Call us at 208-656-3220 or schedule a no-obligation meeting with one of our team members. We can’t wait to hear from you.
Image Source | Rudbeckia