As NHBabssaid, technically prairie isn't native to your area. For some reason "prairie garden" and native have become synonymous in many peopl's mind What is native depends on where you are...what region's native is anothers invasive species. In practice when you talk about "native" the question is how large a region you are willing to pull from. If you are willing to pull from all of North America it is easier. If you are going to go only for plants native to your state it is harder. The

Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center website is very useful.

As far as lanscape design...it's generally a good idea to put taller plants in the back, so they don't hide the smaller plants. Is this an area that can be seen from the windows? For evergreens with "winter interest" to be useful, they have to be tall. I might be tempted to put some Mountain Laurel in the back for accents and Winter Interest. Also some Baptista Australis and Liatris spicata...easy to find and grow North American Natives. My favorite of the local native grasses is Northern Sea Oats.

Prairie Moon has an annual sale on Geranium Maculatim, which is an easy to grow plant for the shady spots.

Lots of good ideas above. For inspiration, check out Nancy J Ondra’s photos of her gardens at Hayefield.com.

Thanks for all of the great info. I'll need print out and dive deeper into some of the suggestions.

I don't think that I made myself very clear at the start. Basically, I'm not very good at visualizing how to group and clump plants. I've tried looking through images to replicate and made spreadsheets of color, height, spread, bloom time, and it all seems sensible at the time, but when I go out to place and plant, things don't seem to make sense, so I get patches of good developed layouts, then other areas with evenly spaced rows that don't look that great.

To me, the best looking area of my yard is the butterfly garden set of plants that I got from Prairie Moon Nursery. This is from two years ago, but give you a pretty good idea. The best part was that it came with a suggested planting grid.

I understand that the "native" label is broad and is specific to its place. As my botanist friend has explained to me, Western New York was once part of the "prairie peninsula". After being thoroughly scoured clear by the last of the glaciers, our region along Lake Erie came to support many of the same plants that grow in the Midwest, carried here by wind and animals as everything slowly worked its way back into this region. The beech-maple forests worked their way back in as well, but this area was much less wooded at the time of settling than much of the North East (being closer to the Midwest than the Atlantic Coast).

One of the local Restoration/Conservation groups has put together this handy guide. But like with a lot of recipes, I know the ingredients, I just don't know what to do with them! :)

Buffalo Niagara Waterkeeper Native Plant Guide

Also, I go by the range maps that Prairie Moon Nursery and few others have for many of their plants. My very stringent (haha) method is to see if they consider it present and native to my county (Erie).

A few more photos for context from earlier today. This is the bottom center of the drawing. The path leads from the driveway to the fence and out into the yard.

The next two photos give a good view of the path, patio, and back of the garage. There hasn't yet been any spring yet to attempt a spring cleanup.

Not sure what kind of grass is behind the garage, looks like this through the winter but greens up within the next month and stays lush and green even when the rest of the grass has started to brown from summer drought, stays green late into the Fall too. Though it is also a pretty good tell of the shadows in the yard, it doesn't tolerate shade well. The green area behind the garage only gets sun in the late afternoon and the grasses runner's never root there.

There is no shade in this area, apart from the house and garage. I've thought about adding some trellis structure to the garage wall for years, but maybe I will finally tackle it this year. Lonerica sempervirens has been high on the list of options, would need to work out what to add to the bed along the wall as well. There is a drainage pipe below grade here, so I can't dig too deep, but adding some evergreen interest would be great for some year round interest.

This area contains nothing of real note. There is some Solomon Seal (Polygonatum biflorum) that has crept under the fence from the neighbor, but if it can be moved, it would be nice to give its little creamy hanging flowers a bit more prominence. Next to it is a Russian sage that I keep around because the bees love it, and I trim it hard in the summer to dry and freshen the smell of the basement. It too can move. The purple iris are in here, but as mentioned by one of you, I don't truly know what kind and where they are from.

It would be great to take better advantage of this area and extend the garden all the way to the patio.

From that corner, you can see the back of the yard and the onely trees that provide shade to the yard. Leafless, it is hard to tell, but these overhang the fence quite a bit blocking the sun for that back area for most of the summer.

The small table is really the only shade in the yard and is the most private as well, so in the summer, I do occasionally set up a chair side table to relax in after working out there for a while.

I think planting some Baptista Australis, echinacea and Liatris along the fences might work.

Planting things in clusters of three tends to work.

Thanks for the photos. I will spend some time considering combos for you. Repetition is useful, either using several plants in a clump or drift for smaller perennials, or using them repeatedly along a bed for larger perennials and shrubs.

Amsonia hubrichtii, Baptisia australis, and Physocarpus 'Coppertina'/ninebark is a combo of natives and their cultivars that is a long term favorite in my garden. If you want a smaller ninebark, look at 'Tiny Wine' which though it isn't tiny, is far smaller than 'Coppertina' and most of the other average sized ones. This was the first spring after planting, but I still like the combo, even when not blooming because of the nice foliage contrast. I initially had a hosta as well, but the voles ate it. All of these are in full sun and you can see that the Baptisia has finished blooming, the Amsonia is just finishing bloom, and the ninebark is getting ready to bloom and the flowers will be followed by bright seed capsules. Amsonia has gorgeous gold fall foliage, so between the nice foliage texture and color contrast and specific attractive aspects of each, the plants have a long season of interest.