Thank You for Using Our WNY Native Plant Shopping Guide

We created this guide to help you find native plants to purchase. We invite native plant nurseries in Western New York to provide a list of native plants they plan to sell during the growing season. We review their selections and compile this guide, which may be freely downloaded, printed, and shared. The nurseries in this guide do not pay to be included, nor do they receive payment for participating. We want to extend our gratitude to the Wild Ones Central New York chapter for their help in putting our first guide together for Western New York.

The plants are listed by scientific name for trees, shrubs, wildflowers, vines, grasses/sedges/rushes, and ferns. We have also included handy codes, shopping tips, and other resources for you to help you make the best selections for your landscape.

This guide’s definition of “native”

We use the Darke/Tallamy functional definition of “native” found in The Living Landscape: “A plant or animal that has evolved in a given place over a period of time sufficient to develop complex and essential relationships with the physical environment and other organisms in a given ecological community.”

About native species, nativars & cultivars

This guide lists native plant species, not cultivars. Cultivars of native plants (sometimes called “nativars”) are generally propagated vegetatively to preserve selected traits attractive to people. They may or may not retain the important habitat properties of the species. Species, on the other hand, provide genetic diversity and provide desirable habitat qualities. Read more about the Wild Ones position “Nativars: Where do they fit in?” on the Wild Ones website.