We are inching ever closer to garden season, and boy, are we excited.

While your local garden store may be filled with beautiful plants and flowers for you to grow, many are not local plant species.

Planting native species in your garden is a fantastic way to enhance your yard’s biodiversity and the environment overall. They are also extremely simple to maintain because they are already primed for our climate.

Check out some of these beautiful plants native to the prairies you can spruce up your garden with.

Wild Bergamot

James W. Thompson/Shutterstock

Wild bergamot is easy to grow, likes full sun, and is drought tolerant. With the exception of the Maritimes, most Canadian provinces have this flower.

Canada Goldenrod

Bildagentur Zoonar GmbH/Shutterstock

The goldenrod is a relatively tall plant with clusters of yellow flowers on top that favours full sun or partial shade. As a bonus for bees, the flower blossoms much later in the season than other flowers and can be found all over the prairies.

You might also like:
• Alberta government to make announcement on GDL changes this weekend
• Community Natural Foods is opening its first Edmonton location soon
• Canadians not pleased with changes to foreign homebuyer ban rules

Swamp Milkweed

Nancy J. Ondra/Shutterstock

The flower, despite its name, grows well in a typical garden but needs more moisture than other types of plants. It’s also a vital plant for the endangered Monarch Butterfly. Swamp Milkweed favours direct sunlight over light cover.

Black-eyed Susan

Julianne Caust/Shutterstock

This pretty yellow flower prefers full sunlight and can be found across Canada.

Asters

Flower_Garden/Shutterstock

Some aster species, common across Canada, thrive in full sun and moderate shade. The petals of the flowers are blue or purple, and the centres are golden. Typically, asters blossom pretty late in the season.

Violets

Olga Miltsova/Shutterstock

Violets flower early in the season, thrive in the shade, and attract bees and butterflies.

Tall Lungwort

Melinda Fawver/Shutterstock

The plant, also known as tall bluebells, is indigenous to Northwestern North America and prefers shaded areas.

You can check out even more incredible plants native to the Edmonton area on the Edmonton Native Plant Society’s plant index.