Writing a story, buying ads or pitching a partnership? Everything you need is on this page. Readers with a plant question can head to Contact.
For press
Writing about native plants, lawns or gardening for beginners? Here are the book, the numbers, approved bios and photos.
The book
Plant Native: A Practical Guide to Over 100 Native Plants of North America comes out from Quarto in March 2027.
Pre-order: Bookshop · ISBN 9798317902094
Quick facts
- Founded in 2021 by Emily Lessard
- More than 750,000 visits a year
- 205+ native plant profiles
- Seven North American regions
- Independently owned. Ads through Raptive since 2026, and no sponsored content
- Traffic peaks in spring, with about 112,000 visits in May 2026
- A monthly newsletter with one regional pick
Featured in
- Redfin: “Post-Winter Yard Cleanup: Essential Steps for Spring Yard Prep”
- Boston Globe: “Ask the Gardener: Believe it or not, spring has sprung”
- Real Simple: “10 Ways Native Plants Make Gardening So Much Easier and More Affordable”
What Emily can talk about
- Replacing a lawn one bed at a time, without the yard looking like a mistake
- Native plants for people who don’t think of themselves as gardeners
- Why native plants needed better marketing, from an agency CEO’s point of view
- The best native plants for each North American region
- Caterpillar host plants, backed by the Shropshire-Tallamy dataset
Bios
Short bio
Emily Lessard is the founder and editor of The Plant Native, a site that helps homeowners across North America put native plants where the lawn used to be. She is a Sustainable Landscapes-certified gardener through the Pennsylvania Landscape & Nursery Association and is finishing a Native Perennial Garden Design Certificate at Temple University. Her first book, Plant Native: A Practical Guide to Over 100 Native Plants of North America, comes out from Quarto in March 2027. She gardens outside Philadelphia.
Longer bio
Emily Lessard started The Plant Native in 2021 because she thought native plants needed a marketing partner. By day, she is Co-CEO of Bellweather, an advertising agency she co-founded for nonprofits, where she works with clients including the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, Everytown for Gun Safety and Brooklyn Public Library. Native plants presented the same challenge in a different costume: every reason to plant them, and a category that had spent decades talking to homeowners in Latin and field-study jargon.
The Plant Native now draws more than 750,000 visits a year from across the US and Canada. A small team of contributing writers covers seven North American regions, all writing under one rule: keep the weird, lose the textbook.
Emily is a Sustainable Landscapes-certified gardener through the Pennsylvania Landscape & Nursery Association and is finishing a Native Perennial Garden Design Certificate at Temple University. Her first book, Plant Native: A Practical Guide to Over 100 Native Plants of North America, comes out from Quarto in March 2027. She gardens outside Philadelphia.
Press contact
For interviews and expert comment: Emily Lessard, hello@theplantnative.com.
How this site is funded
The Plant Native is independently owned. Display ads and clearly labeled affiliate links pay our writers and keep the lights on. Nobody can buy a recommendation from us, and the sections below explain what is for sale and who to talk to.
Display advertising
Every display ad on The Plant Native is managed by Raptive, our ad partner since 2026. Brands buy that space through the major ad exchanges, so there’s nothing to book with us directly, and we can’t place, sell or remove individual ads ourselves.
- Private marketplace (PMP) deals: email Raptive’s team at pmpteam@raptive.com.
- Brand programs across Raptive’s creators: use Raptive’s advertiser contact form.
- An ad looks wrong on our site? Send us the page and a screenshot and we’ll pass it to Raptive.
Affiliate partnerships
When we link to a book or product we’d recommend anyway, we sometimes use an affiliate link, and we always label it. Today that means Bookshop.org and Amazon.
Sell native plants, seeds or garden tools and run an affiliate program? Pitch us. We only say yes to things we’d use in our own yards, and a commission never changes what we recommend or the order we list it in.
For native plant nurseries
Every verifiable native plant nursery can be listed in our nursery directory for free. Tell us about your nursery.
What we don’t sell
To keep every recommendation honest, these are off the table:
- Sponsored posts or paid reviews
- Paid placement in plant profiles, guides or rankings
- Paid interviews (we choose who we interview)
- Guest posts with links
Our editorial standards cover the rest.
Get in touch
Press and interviews: hello@theplantnative.com. Affiliate programs, nurseries and partnerships: hello@theplantnative.com. Ad buying and PMP deals: Raptive, above.
The ads on this site help pay real native plant nerds to research and write these guides.