The Rocky Mountain Native Plant Primer - by Bryan Fischer & Lauren Springer (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

From two of Colorado's leading native plant experts, this accessible and colorful guide to planting natives will help gardeners at every level of experience add beneficial pollinators to their home gardens.

Your garden can make a difference when you choose plants native to our Rocky Mountain region. From reducing maintenance tasks, to waterwise planting, to attracting earth-friendly pollinators such as native birds, butterflies, and bees, the rewards found in this book will benefit you and your backyard's ecosystem. In The Rocky Mountain Native Plant Primer, native plant experts Bryan Fischer and Lauren Springer make adding and designing with these superstar plants easier than ever before, with proven advice that every home gardener can follow.

This incomparable guide includes recommended native trees, shrubs, vines, ferns, wildflowers, grasses, sedges, and annuals. It's everything you need to know to create a beautiful and beneficial garden, perfect for gardeners in northern New Mexico, northern Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, much of Idaho and Montana, the Texas Panhandle, and the western halves of Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas.

About the Author

A gardener since he could hold a shovel, Bryan Fischer holds a B.S. in horticulture and an interdisciplinary minor in organic agriculture from Colorado State University. Now he is Curator of Plant Collections for the Gardens on Spring Creek in Fort Collins, where he designed a half-acre Prairie Garden that has garnered national and international attention. Outside of the public garden realm, Bryan breeds and selects especially garden-worthy forms of native plants that retain their wildlife value, botanizes in wild spaces, and writes, speaks, and teaches regionally and nationally. Bryan is a regular contributor to Fine Gardening. He keeps an intensive personal garden where he trials both design concepts and his new plant introductions.

Colorado plantswoman and designer Lauren Springer has been pioneering ecologically attuned plant selection, garden practices, and regionally resonant design for more than three decades, beginning with her development of hellstrips back in the 1990's. She holds a masters degree in horticulture from Penn State and has been a professional propagator for much of her career. Her work is featured regularly in both the national and international press. Four of her recent design projects have received Audubon Rockies Habitat Hero designation. Through Lauren's public garden designs, books, classes and talks, and plant introductions, she continues to influence and help move the Rocky Mountain region's horticulture forward to a more diverse, creature-supportive, beautiful, and resilient future.