Tuesday, March 17, 2026
Visualizing the Native Garden:
A Practical Design Tool for Planning Gardens
Presenter | Dustin Demmer
Many native gardeners have extensive plant lists—but translating those lists into cohesive garden designs is another challenge. This presentation introduces a unique, illustration-based native plant design tool that offers a fresh, hands-on approach to garden planning. Unlike traditional paper or digital layouts, this novel visual system allows gardeners to visually test layouts, experiment with layering, and evaluate bloom progression in a more intuitive way. After introducing this intuitive design process, we will go through a design scenario for a small, city garden with plenty of flowers and short grasses in the increasingly popular mixed style of gardening.
Dustin Demmer founded the native plant nursery Blazing Star Gardens 13 years ago with a mission to bring native plants back into our communities. By promoting practical, low-maintenance strategies, he works to make native gardening accessible to beginners and experts alike. He is especially known for his use of short sedges and grasses as the structural backbone of a garden—so much so that one customer once remarked their design had “too many grasses,” even though Dustin had already reduced them by half of what he typically recommends.
