Every change
How what to grow instead grew, newest first — the same plain notes that go out with each update.
Version 0.41
October 12, 2026- Chinese pistache gets a native stand-in — Texas red oak or flameleaf sumac for the same red autumn.
Version 0.32
September 19, 2026- tap the small picture beside a suggested plant and it opens full size, with the photographer's name and licence — the same viewer the big photographs use.
- 27 more of the garden plants we suggest a native for now have a photograph of their own, instead of a drawing of a generic shrub.
- the plant's name in each suggestion is the link to its page now, in place of the wide button underneath it — so a page of five suggestions is a screenful shorter.
- on a laptop these pages use the width they have. The photograph sits beside the text, and each thing being compared reads across one line instead of three.
- "Photos on iNaturalist" opens the plant's own page there, rather than a list of search results to pick from.
- the list of swaps for one region fills a laptop screen like the full list already did, instead of squeezing into a narrow column down the middle.
Version 0.31
September 18, 2026- crape myrtle now has natives beside it — serviceberry and redbud in the Mid-Atlantic, fringetree and Simpson's stopper in Florida. It's a fine tree on nobody's invasive list; about three kinds of caterpillar live on it. See the swaps
- a bahiagrass lawn in central Florida meets sunshine mimosa — a low pink-flowered mat you mow two or three times a year instead of weekly.
- eight more of the plants people actually buy now have natives beside them — mophead hydrangea, lilac, Japanese spirea, Indian hawthorn, lantana, Japanese andromeda, horse-chestnut and Chinese wisteria. See the swaps
- horse-chestnut goes brown and shrivelled by high summer now, all over Europe — a leaf-mining moth spread with it. Small-leaved lime keeps its leaves, and hums with bees in July.
- lantana really is a nectar bar, and Florida's worst-tier invasive besides. California fuchsia brings the hummingbirds without the thickets or the berries that poison livestock.
- a mophead hydrangea's big florets are sterile — bred for size, so no nectar and no pollen. Arrowwood viburnum and Pacific ninebark carry the same white plates, every floret working.
- nine more, taken in order of how widely they're grown — ginkgo, sweetgum, southern magnolia, strawberry tree, Mexican bush sage, Cape plumbago, bottlebrush, Japanese cheesewood and trailing lantana.
- a ginkgo is a marvel and no caterpillar on this continent has ever met one, so a ginkgo avenue is a place birds hunt and find nothing. Red maple feeds close to three hundred kinds.
- the Central California Coast has its first swap stories — madrone for a strawberry tree, hummingbird sage for a Mexican one, beach strawberry for trailing lantana. See the swaps
- nine more from the top of the list — rosemary planted by the hundred on banks, Norway spruce, giant sequoia, European beech, oakleaf hydrangea, star magnolia, blue passionflower, jade plant and garden tulips. See the swaps
- if a passionflower appealed because of the butterflies, California pipevine is the local version of that bargain — the only plant the pipevine swallowtail's caterpillars can eat, anywhere.
- a bed of modern tulips is a shop window with nothing on the shelves — the nectar has been bred out of the doubles and parrots. Bluebells come back thicker every year instead of thinner.
- keep the rosemary by the kitchen door. This is about the banks and car parks planted with it by the hundred, a hundred miles from anywhere it grew up.
Version 0.29
September 18, 2026- the everyday garden staples now have native answers too. Daylilies, hostas, periwinkle, maiden grass, garden roses and yellow flag iris each meet the native that does their job — so nearly half of every plant we recommend now names what it stands in for. See them
- a photo of each, and linked to the look-alikes. Every ornamental now opens with a real picture, and where one is also a plant people mistake for a native, the two pages link across — “tell it apart” one way, “grow a native instead” the other. See them
- now in French for Atlantic France. Every ornamental there and the native that betters it reads in French — what each plant is, and the side-by-side on the water it saves, the disease it dodges and the wildlife it feeds. Other regions follow. See them
Version 0.28
August 30, 2026- what to grow instead.** A new page sets the ornamentals people plant everywhere — and that aren’t from here — beside a native that does the same job, as tough on water and disease and better for wildlife. A Bermuda-grass lawn, meet little bluestem. See them
- A share card for every native swap. Share a link to an ornamental people plant everywhere and the preview now shows it in a cautioning amber, what it's grown for, and how many natives do the same job — the native-swaps page gets one too.