Native Plants

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Thursday - May 27, 2010
From: Comanche, OK
Region: Southwest
Topic: Wildflowers
Title: Wildflowers for a large backyard in Oklahoma
Answered by: Nan Hampton
QUESTION:
I have a large back yard in full sun. What native flowers should I plant here?ANSWER:
Please take a look at our Oklahoma Recommended page to find a list of commercially available plants native to Oklahoma that are suitable for landscaping. You can use the NARROW YOUR SEARCH option from the side bar to choose 'Herb' from GENERAL APPEARANCE and 'Sun...' from LIGHT REQUIREMENT to find nearly fifty wildflowers that you could use. If you were interested in having only perennials, you could also choose that from LIFESPAN. You could also make choices in the SOIL MOISTURE, BLOOM COLOR and BLOOM TIME categories if you like. Here are a few wildflowers from tht list that would make a nice choice, but there are many other very nice choices.
Gaillardia pulchella (firewheel)
Glandularia bipinnatifida var. bipinnatifida (Dakota mock vervain)
Liatris elegans (pinkscale blazing star)
Lobelia cardinalis (cardinalflower)
Lupinus texensis (Texas bluebonnet)
Oenothera speciosa (pinkladies)
Rudbeckia hirta (blackeyed Susan)
Thelesperma filifolium (stiff greenthread)
If you wanted to make your backyard into a sort of meadow, you might like to read our How to Article, Meadow Gardening. In this article you will see that we recommend planting native grasses with the wildflowers. Here are a few recommended ones:
Bouteloua curtipendula (sideoats grama)
Bouteloua gracilis (blue grama)
Elymus canadensis (Canada wildrye)
Schizachyrium scoparium (little bluestem)
Here are photos from our Image Gallery:
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