A black swallowtail butterfly visits Susan Brownstein's coneflower in her garden.

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The weather is too unpredictable to start working on the flower beds in earnest, but while the ground is moist and the lawn and weeds are dormant, it is a perfect time of year to start reclaiming some lawn space for a flower bed.

I shrunk my first lawn in California, where years of drought have made it a necessity in many areas. The soil there is mostly dirt and rocks with no nutrients or moisture retention, so it was more out of desperation than any sort of woke mentality that I discovered landscaping with native plants. Sure, with enough water, fertilizer, and soil amendments, you could establish the traditional bushes that were familiar from my Ohio childhood, like azaleas and lavender. You could even grow showy glamorous tropical plants from around the world, but it turns out the bougainvillea, hibiscus, and palm trees we all associate with Southern California aren’t from here and take a lot of water and luck to establish. I was a working mom with two young kids and a hefty mortgage payment, and I didn’t have time or money for all that fuss. The great thing about native plants, I discovered, is that they actually want to grow in lousy conditions—it’s where they belong.

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