Minnesota has a remarkable native plant palette that most homeowners never consider. Prairie grasses with plumes that catch the November light. Woodland wildflowers that carpet a shaded slope in spring. Native shrubs that hold their berries well into December, feeding the birds that stay through the cold. The conventional landscape, turf grass, boxwoods, and the same five ornamental plants you see in every suburban garden, is a maintenance-intensive system that provides very little in return. It demands regular watering, seasonal feeding, and the kind of weekly attention that few people genuinely enjoy giving. Native plantings, once established, ask far less and give back in ways that are harder to quantify but easier to live with.
Prairie grasses are among the most underused design elements in Minnesota residential landscapes. Big bluestem, little bluestem, switchgrass, and prairie dropseed all offer extraordinary textural presence throughout the growing season and carry that presence into winter in ways that most ornamental grasses cannot match. Little bluestem in particular turns a copper-orange in fall that is as warm and vivid as any perennial flower. These grasses are also drought-tolerant once established, deeply rooted, and largely pest-resistant, characteristics that are not incidental but are the product of thousands of years of adaptation to the Minnesota climate. We increasingly specify prairie grass drifts as the primary ground plane in residential landscapes, using them the way a conventional designer might use lawn: as a unifying field that connects other planting elements and gives the eye somewhere to rest.
Shoreline restoration is one of the most impactful landscape interventions available to lakeshore property owners, and one of the most frequently overlooked. The conventional maintained lawn that runs to the water's edge is actually a significant source of nutrient loading to the lake, fertilizers, pesticides, and runoff from bare soil all find their way to the water with relative ease across a conventional turf buffer. A native shoreline planting, by contrast, filters runoff, stabilizes the bank with deep root systems, provides habitat for the fish and waterfowl that make the lake worth living on, and typically satisfies or exceeds the shoreline buffer requirements imposed by the Minnehaha Creek Watershed District. Many clients are initially resistant to giving up their manicured lawn to the water's edge, but the ones who have made the transition consistently tell us they prefer what they have now: something that moves, changes through the seasons, and feels genuinely alive.
Four-season interest is a design consideration that separates good landscape design from average landscape design in a northern climate. The typical landscape plan accounts for spring bloom and summer color and then essentially surrenders to the dormant season. A native landscape thoughtfully designed for Minnesota winters has a different character: the skeletal forms of native sumac and elderberry against snow, the rattling seed heads of coneflowers providing food for goldfinches, the persistence of ornamental grasses that hold their structure well into January. We design with winter views in mind because in Minnesota you are looking at the landscape through a window for five months of the year, and what you see should be worth looking at. The views from the primary living spaces, the kitchen, the primary bedroom, the main entrance, these are the views that get prioritized in our planting plans.
Our approach to landscape integration at Lake Street Design Co. begins with the architecture, not after it. The relationship between a building and its site, the way a terrace meets the garden, the way planting softens or frames the approach to a front door, the way a shoreline composition relates to the view from the living room, is designed concurrently with the building itself rather than applied as a finish layer at the end. We work with landscape architects and horticulturists we trust deeply, and we bring them into projects at the concept stage, not the construction documents stage. The landscapes that feel most integrated with the homes we build are the ones where those conversations happened early, where the outdoor spaces were considered as rooms with their own programs and proportions, and where the choice to plant natively was a design decision rather than an afterthought.