Building a Pollinator Patch? We Made a Free Native Plant Library

I was scrolling Instagram a few weeks ago when I came across an account doing something that genuinely frustrated me. Every comment asking about native plants got the same answer — a link. And behind that link? A paid download. A printout. A "resource" you had to purchase just to find out what plants were native to your own backyard.

I put my phone down and thought: that's not okay.

Information about native plants — what grows where, what feeds what, what actually belongs in your soil — that's not a product. That's the kind of knowledge that gets passed between neighbors over a fence, scribbled in the margins of a field guide, traded at seed swaps. It belongs to everyone. And right now, in a world where monarch populations are declining and pollinator habitats are disappearing one lawn at a time, we don't have the luxury of gatekeeping it.

So we built something better. And we made it free.

Introducing the Bits & Blooms Native Plant Resource Library

The Bits & Blooms Native Plant Resource Library is now live on our website — 82 native North American garden plants, fully searchable, completely free, no email required, no paywall, no strings attached.

Whether you're a backyard gardener trying to figure out what to plant in the corner that gets afternoon shade, a flower farmer looking to add natives to your production beds, or someone building a pollinator patch from scratch and starting with zero idea where to begin — this library was built for you.

Here's what you can do with it:

Search by state. Every plant in the library is tagged with the states it's actually native to. Filter to your state and you'll see only the plants that belong in your region — not a generic list pulled from somewhere on the internet, but accurate native range data for all 50 states.

Filter by sun requirement. Full sun or part shade — because the shadiest corner of your yard deserves as much attention as the sunny border out front.

Browse by plant type. Perennial flowers, spring ephemerals, shrubs, trees, ornamental grasses, ferns, vines, groundcovers — the library covers the full range of what a native garden can be, not just the flashy pollinators everyone already knows about.

Why We Planted Boneset — And Why a Monarch Showed Up

The header image on the library page is a photo I took right here on the farm: a monarch butterfly on boneset, one of our native plantings.

I didn't stage it. I didn't plan it. I just looked up one afternoon and there she was.

Boneset — Eupatorium perfoliatum — is one of those plants most people have never heard of. It's not showy. It's not the purple coneflower or the blazing star that ends up on every pollinator garden list. But it's deeply native to the eastern US, it blooms in late summer when almost nothing else does, and it is an absolute magnet for native bees, butterflies, and beneficial insects when everything else is winding down.

That monarch didn't land there by accident. She landed there because we planted something that belonged. Because that patch of boneset was exactly what the ecosystem needed in that moment — and she knew it, even if we had to learn it.

That's the whole argument for native plants in one photograph.

What Makes a Plant "Native" — and Why It Matters for Pollinators

A native plant is one that evolved in a specific region over thousands of years alongside the insects, birds, and animals that depend on it. That co-evolution matters more than most people realize.

Monarch butterflies, for example, can only lay their eggs on milkweed. Not a milkweed relative. Not a garden plant that looks similar. Milkweed specifically — Asclepias — the plant their caterpillars have eaten exclusively for thousands of generations. No milkweed, no monarchs. It's that simple, and it's that serious.

The same principle applies across the board. Many native bees are specialists — they have evolved to collect pollen from one specific plant family, or even one specific genus. When we fill our gardens with non-native ornamentals, we're essentially setting a table with food that the local wildlife can't eat. The garden looks beautiful. The pollinators starve.

Planting native doesn't mean giving up a beautiful garden. Purple coneflower, cardinal flower, wild blue indigo, blazing star, swamp rose mallow — the plants in our library are stunning. They're also doing something the imported ornamentals never will: feeding the butterflies, supporting the bees, and rebuilding the habitat that's been disappearing for decades.

How to Use the Library

Head to bitsandbloomsflowerfarm.com and find the Native Plant Resource Library in the Resources menu.

Use the search bar to look up a plant by common or scientific name. Use the state dropdown to filter by your location. Use the sun filter to narrow by light conditions. Use the plant type filter to find exactly the category you need.

Each plant card shows you the common name, scientific name, sun requirement, plant type, a description of how it grows and what it supports, and a photo pulled directly from Wikipedia's open image library — because open-source knowledge deserves open-source photos.

The library will grow over time. If there's a native plant you love that you don't see listed, send us a note — we'd love to add it.

Share This — Please

Here's the honest ask: share this with everyone you know who gardens.

Not because it helps us — though we won't pretend the traffic isn't appreciated. But because the more people who know what's native to their area, the more native plants get planted. The more native plants get planted, the more monarchs have milkweed to lay eggs on. The more milkweed there is, the more monarchs there are. The more monarchs there are, the better chance our kids and grandkids have of looking up one afternoon and seeing one land on a patch of boneset and thinking: she didn't land there by accident.

This resource is FREE. Knowledge about native plants should belong to everyone. Pass it on. 

Bits & Blooms Flower Farm is a specialty cut flower farm and farmer florist operation in Franklinville, NJ. We grow native and specialty flowers, offer flower subscriptions and wedding florals, and believe deeply that farming with intention means farming in a way that gives something back to the land. Find us at bitsandbloomsflowerfarm.com.