Our Approach
I believe true native gardens should be built primarily on pure species, not native cultivars. That said, I don't believe a garden needs to be exclusively native to have value; there's real room for ornamentals and food crops too.
A "pure species" is a plant as it evolved in the wild, shaped over time by its relationship with the local climate, soil, and pollinators. A native cultivar, by contrast, is a native species that has been selectively bred by people for a specific trait, like flower color, bloom size, or foliage form.
Cultivars can be beautiful, and I do use them, but as accents, not as the backbone of a design. A cultivar represents only a narrow slice of a species' natural genetic diversity, and the very traits that make it visually striking are sometimes the traits that make it less useful to the pollinators and wildlife that species evolved alongside. A native bee that relies on a specific flower shape or bloom time doesn't always benefit from a cultivar bred to change that exact feature.
That's why the majority of every garden I design is built on straight species. It's the most direct way to recreate the ecological relationships that took thousands of years to form, and it's what allows a garden to function as a genuine habitat, not just a native-themed decoration.
That same philosophy is also why there's still a place in my designs for ornamentals and food crops from other parts of the world. A vegetable bed or fruit tree can add real, lasting value to your life for years to come, and a striking ornamental can be the very thing that first opens someone's eyes to the beauty of the natural world. Straight species form the ecological backbone of the garden; everything else, whether cultivar, ornamental, or edible, has an intentional place within it.