Hi! I’m Emily, but I go by Em. I live in the Philadelphia region with my husband John Lehr, my daughter, our dog Frida, and four chickens (Kitty, Tweety, Peach, and Duane the Rock Johnson—who we call Rocky for short). I’m 46 years old with a streak of white hair I refuse to dye to prove it. I am committed to my yard being forever, gloriously in progress. My garden is an ongoing, tumbling experiment I do mostly in pajama pants, hair in a messy bun, in full sight of my neighbors.
Currently, I’m back at college, earning my Native Perennial Garden Design Certificate from Temple University. I am always the oldest person in class—and sometimes that includes counting the teacher.
I started The Plant Native in 2021, and I’ll tell you the story of why in a few sentences. By day, I am Co-CEO of Bellweather, an advertising agency I co-founded to serve nonprofits. For all 10 years of our business, we’ve only worked with non-profit clients, including Brooklyn Bridge Park, 988 Suicide Lifeline, and even branding cities like Baltimore. If you’ve been in NYC in the last decade, I bet you’ve seen our work.
How did The Plant Native start?
I frequently get asked how this all began. Well, I’m sorry to bring up the spring of 2020, but that’s when this story starts. Like so many of us, I was looking for something hopeful in the middle of so much fear and uncertainty.
It started with a hummingbird
During these early dark days of COVID, I planted a small patch of native plants in my suburban yard. I had no idea what I was doing, so I picked them based on the poetry in their names: sweetshrub, redbud, and cardinal flower.
I had no idea what I was doing. I had just moved to Philadelphia after 15 years in New York City. Owning a shovel felt like a novelty. But I tried it anyway—digging up a patch in my front yard and planting my native plants. I barely paid attention to them, and they thrived. Within a month, I saw a hummingbird show up for the cardinal flower. It was the first one I had ever seen in real life.
I was hooked.
Then I went looking for what to plant next
I went looking for books and websites to tell me what to try next. What I found was written for botanists or those with much more time on their hands: lots of scientific Latin names, a hardiness zone chart, and a tone that made it sound like one wrong move would ruin everything. I felt a little lonely, like I was taking a test I was bound to fail without hiring an expensive group of experts.
But my own yard and my own experiences told a different story. I had no idea what what I was doing, yet the native plants thrived. These plants were forgiving, beautiful, and easy to grow. Somebody just needed to say so in an easy-going, friendly way.
I started The Plant Native to give native plants a marketing partner
Native plants have everything going for them—ease, beauty, ecological benefits—but I saw that they needed a better story. The case for them is clear, but the category has spent decades speaking in Latin and field-study jargon. In 2021, I started The Plant Native to close that gap.
How the site grew
- 2020: Knowing nothing, I planted native plants in my own yard. Cue my first hummingbird.
- 2021: The Plant Native launches, with about 10 visitors a day. (Thanks, Mom.)
- 2022: I keep writing, thinking no one will care.
- 2023: I keep writing, seeing a few people care.
- 2024: I am amazed to see that around 10,000 people a month start to visit.
- March 2025: Redfin asks me about spring gardening.
- September 2025: I start horticulture classes at Temple University.
- January 2026: We add ads to pay our writers, and hire our first freelance contributor (thanks Kimberly!)
- March 2027: Plant Native: A Practical Guide to Over 100 Native Plants of North America, the book, comes out from Quarto.
- May 2027: Hopefully, I graduate from Temple!
Today, fellow plant newbies and nerds visit more than 750,000 times a year. Most arrive by looking up one specific plant they saw in a yard or on Instagram. If that’s you, welcome. The Plant Native was made for you.
A little more about me
I love science and art
I moved a lot when I was a kid, from New Hampshire to California from the time I was six to the time I was sixteen. Looking back, I bet I would have gone the science route if I had not moved so much—the science curricula change so drastically across school districts, I could never keep up. I’ve always loved nature, reading, and exploring.
Instead, I chose my mother’s path and went the art route. I have a degree in art from the University of California at Santa Cruz, and a Master’s Degree in Graphic Design from the Yale School of Art. In the years after graduation, I designed art books, worked at top advertising firms, and served as the Creative Director for New York City tourism (I ran a campaign with a then-recent NYC resident: Taylor Swift). I left the NYC tourism board to found Bellweather in 2016.
When I smush all of this together, I see The Plant Native as the natural center of this sprawling Venn diagram. All of my North American experiences + visual storytelling + science = The Plant Native. It just took a few decades to get here.
When do I have time to do this?
This website, this brand, and the book are the results of working on something in little bites, every day. I work on The Plant Native in the early mornings before the emails come in, and on the weekends when I have a few hours to focus on something as wonderful as: is an Eastern flowering dogwood “flower” a sepal or a bract?
When you add up 30 minutes to a few hours every day for five years, you get here. This sentence is the culmination of years of tiny efforts, compounding. I have to sincerely thank my husband for seeing my passion and always supporting me, even when this was just a few dozen visitors a day.
Is this a business? Or a non-profit?
I’m not sure what it will become, but I know this: The Plant Native is my life’s work. I am dedicated to learning, doing, and making mistakes. Right now, it’s a business where every single dollar earned goes back into hiring experts, paying for images, and covering website costs. My dream is to have it return enough money to have a full-time team growing the company (pun intended).
Credentials and upcoming projects
- I wrote a book! Plant Native: A Practical Guide to Over 100 Native Plants of North America (Quarto Publishing, March 2027)
- I went back to college, for the third time! Native Perennial Garden Design Certificate, Temple University, spring 2027
- I’m certified! Sustainable Landscapes-Certified Gardener, by the Pennsylvania Landscape & Nursery Association (PLNA)
- Get in touch! Find me on LinkedIn, email hello@theplantnative.com, or use our contact page.
Plant one thing
If something we wrote helped you plant one thing, you did it—and we did it.
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—Emily Lessard
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