Native plants without the MG certification
I wanted a garden that would bloom from March through First Frost, and that's what this website is for.
This website is for my garden, and maybe yours too, if you're in Denver and like to garden. The data here is sourced primarily from CSU articles and City of Denver lists-of-approved-things. Because the datasources are technical, created by experts, they have a sort of implicit assumption of knowledge that makes them entirely useless for any purpose other than having a big satisfying list of things. So I have fed these datasources to MACHINE, had it go out and do a bit of research, and made it write breathless summaries of various plants.
For now, all the plants are native and most of them are suitable for xeric gardens, though this is more an accident of datasources than a deliberate choice.
More importantly, I generate structured data for things like water needs, bloom and foliage, color, dimensions, etc. to help with the Actual Planning of a garden. I hope you find it helpful too!
Please feel free to reach out with feedback, experiences, suggestions, corrections. plants@arbuckle.io
This is a noncommercial project. I don't have a product to sell, I don't earn money from affiliate links, I don't accept money from advertisers, and I never will. That said, many (not most, sadly) of the plants on this website are available for sale online from various passionate enthusiasts.
Colorado Hardy Plants - This is just a guy who sells cuttings and seedlings from a bank of 300+ plants he cultivates at 6000' above sea level. Way cool.
High Country Gardens - The O.G. of prairie gardens. Great resource for flowering plants, less useful for trees and shrubs.
Native Seed Search - I don't have a food section on this site yet but when I do, the weird altitude-adapted melons and maize that these guys sell will be featured heavily.
This site was vibecoded. There are a couple of problems with this.
The quotes were all made up, and I discovered that too late. Alas. In time I will backfill with real data. The images are all from wikimedia commons, and I made it a point to manually verify and attribute each one. After I realized it was throwing away data, I now instruct MACHINE to save and link its sources when it does research. And when I do my own research on a plant, I update the card with additional data and sources.
I encourage readers to follow links and read from a primary source. You never know what you'll learn!
To the folks who have shared their knowledge, online and elsewhere: Thank you.