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Landscaping With Native Plants Goes Mainstream

Without artifice, but full of authentic Mountain style

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Shade garden created by Blake Nursery with abundantly naturalized Aspen (Populus tremuloides), Columbine (Aquilegia), Sticky Geranium (Geranium viscosissimum), and Harebell (Campanula rotundifolia). This is truly close to a no-maintenance garden, with the understanding that you are willing to “go with the flow”, i.e. it is always evolving with self sowing of seeds and thus is different from year to year. Photo courtesy Cherie Rutt, Ringo Marketing.Low maintenance, drought tolerant, occasionally irrigated lawn south of Livingston, Montana created by Blake Nursery using a custom native grass seed mix. Grass species selection was based on soil, water, and elevation conditions. Francis Blake, is the company guru for native grass seeding. Photo courtesy Sandi Blake.Low-growing, delightful and often overlooked Gumbo Lily, or Gumbo Evening Primrose (Oenothera caespitosa), attracts nocturnal hawk moths for pollination when flowering at sunset. Meriwether Lewis collected a specimen in Montana in July, 1806. This original plant was exhibited at Crazy Mountain Museum in Big Timber during the 2006 bicentennial celebration. Photo courtesy Sandi Blake.
Carefree beauty abounds in the Lewis & Clark Montana Native Plant Garden at Crazy Mountain Museum in Big Timber. This interpretive garden, created in 2004 for the L&C Bicentennial includes many of the plants collected by the explorers, including Blanketflower (Gaillardia aristata), Purple Prairie Clover (Dalea purpurea), Silky Lupine (Lupinus sericeus), and Golden Currant (Ribes aureum). Photo courtesy Sandi Blake.
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