Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Inspiration

Why this plant finder is now essential to our gardens

Stacey Nguyen
By

If you’re a gardening and landscaping novice, you might be intimidated by the vast variety of plants out there. One resource that’s excellent for new garden designers is High Country Gardens’ plant finder. High Country Gardens is essentially an established plant e-commerce with a highly detailed shopping tool called the plant finder. While the plant finder is technically a feature of the company’s online business, it’s still a helpful database for beginners who want to smoothly navigate all the possible plants for their garden with a directory that’s both detailed and easily digestible. Ahead, we break down everything you need to know about High Country Gardens and go over how you can use its convenient plant finder tool.

An assortment of small cacti, all different shapes and colors, in black plastic pots
Lena Rose/Unsplash

What is High Country Gardens?

Before we dig into the plant finder, let’s talk about the backstory of High Country Gardens. Horticulturist David Salman started High Country Gardens in 1993 as a mail-order division of Santa Fe Greenhouses. At Santa Fe Greenhouses, which was developed in 1984, he focused on cultivating and growing water-wise or “xeric” plants. Its offerings included perennials, native plants, ornamental grasses, and succulents. At High Country Gardens, he pioneered mail-order gardening with a focus on sustainable, low-water landscapes. By 2012, the Salman family sold High Country Gardens to American Meadows, and the partnership allowed them to expand the company’s e-commerce site and greenhouse space. If you’re curious about the origins of the business, you can learn more about High Country Gardens on its About Us page.

Recommended Videos

Using the plant finder

One of the most helpful resources on the High Country Gardens site is its plant finder, which you can find in the third link on its top menu. While many plant sellers have taken to online selling, not many websites offer as detailed a categorization system as High Country Gardens’. With the plant finder, both new and experienced gardeners can browse specific parameters to find the exact right plant.

Related

Browsing by categories

The best feature about the plant finder is that you can browse by specific categories. The four main categories are Regional Plants, Habitat & Wildlife Plants, Low Water Plants, and Suggested Uses.

  • Regional Plants: The Regional Plants category breaks down into further location-based subcategories such as plants from the southeast, southwest, west, and more. You can browse based on where the plant comes from. Shopping by region will help you track down a native plant with a better chance of survival in your climate.
  • Habitat & Wildlife Plants: The Habitat & Wildlife Plants category further breaks down into subcategories of plants that attract certain specific pollinators, such as bees, birds, butterflies, and more. On the flip side, there’s also a category for deer-resistant plants so you can track down foliage that won’t get eaten by visiting deer!
  • Low Water Plants: The Low Water Plants category breaks down into subcategories for desert landscaping plants, water-wise plants, rock garden plants, and more. Discover drought-tolerant cacti, succulents, shrubs, and other perennials based on your garden design plan.
  • Suggested Uses: The Suggested Uses category will help you find foliage based on where you’re placing your plants. Consider whether you’ll be using them as a groundcover or popping them in a container and whether you’ll be keeping them in the sun or in partial shade.

On an additional note, the plant finder’s sidebar will also give you broader suggestions for plants that are new, top-rated, exclusive, and more.

Discovering other shopping descriptions and filters

When you click into the category that interests you, you’ll find more information in the description at the top of the page. You can also use filters to further narrow your selection down to the plants that match all of your needs and interests. Filter categories include more pragmatic characteristics such as light requirements, planting time, soil type, and soil moisture. You can also cut down your results based on physical characteristics such as flower color and height.

Person pruning flowers
Surkova.photo/Shutterstock

Finding information in each product description

In addition to High Country Gardens’ plant finder and detailed category pages, you’ll find plenty of information in each product description. When you click into a plant, you’ll find a short paragraph about the plant’s appearance and origins. Beneath the description, there are quick facts about the plant’s suitable zones, advantages, light requirements, water tolerance, mature height, mature spread, and bloom time. The information is brief and concise, but there’s also another detailed paragraph at the bottom of the product page as well.

High Country Gardens’ plant finder is an excellent and detailed resource for gardeners trying to figure out what kind of foliage to include in their garden design. Whether you’re looking for pollinator-friendly plants or plants native to your local region, you’ll be able to navigate the plant finder with ease to find the most suitable picks. With some searching and sifting through the site, you’ll be well on your way to creating the garden of your dreams.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Stacey Nguyen
Stacey Nguyen
Contributor
Stacey's work has appeared on sites such as POPSUGAR, HelloGiggles, Buzzfeed, The Balance, TripSavvy, and more. When she's…
Can you grow a bird of paradise from a cutting? Here’s what you need to know to grow your dream plant
Tips and tricks for successfully propagating a bird of paradise plant
Bird of paradise plant

Whether they're found in their natural habitats in the wild or as the centerpiece in an indoor garden, bird of paradise are eye-catching and perfect plants for adding some color and tropical flair to your home. This plant is native to South Africa and is well-known for its lush foliage and attractive tropical blooms with vividly colored flowers. The plant gets its name from the stunning flower's resemblance to a colorful bird in flight.

For all its perks, the plant also can be costly to acquire and slow to cultivate from seed. So when you find yourself wanting more than one of these attractive plants, what can you do? Take a cutting and grow a new plant! No matter if you're just starting out with a new cutting from a friend or you're adding to your existing plant's family, you can add more of these plants to your collection easily and at little or no expense.

Read more
How will the summer solstice affect your garden? What you need to know
Everything to know about gardening around the summer solstice
Parent and child having fun by garden

While you may be diving into the ocean during summer vacation season, your flowers will be focusing on something different: how long the daylight lasts. Summer solstice gardening is an important concept when it comes to making sure your plants are growing and blooming on schedule. This is the longest day of the year, the time when your garden will be receiving the most light. Unsure about how this will impact your garden? This simple guide will explain everything!

What is the summer solstice?
The summer solstice, also known as midsummer, is the halfway point of the summer. The solstices, especially summertime, is important for gardeners because of the effect on how their plants flower in their garden. The summer solstice, specifically, is the summer day that has the longest sunlight and shortest night, and plants use the length of the nights to cue the release of hormones for flowering and fruiting.

Read more
Zone 10a planting guide: Here’s what you need to know about what you can plant
Zone 10a plants and their growing schedules
Woman reading book by plants

Consisting of the southernmost parts of the U.S., zone 10a is a rich region for a wide range of plants. While you might need to keep an eye out for your tender herbs and cold-hardy plants, many flowers, succulents, and plants can thrive in zone 10a's warm temperature outdoors. Below, we've put together a zone 10a planting guide to break down all that you need to know about this welcoming environment for nourishing foliage life.

What is a climate zone? 
With the Plant Hardiness Zone Map, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has divided the country into 13 different climate zones based on average annual minimum temperature ranges. Zone 1 has the coolest temperatures, while Zone 13 has the warmest ones.

Read more