I’ve been getting more and more into native plants as I rewild my yard by not mowing. I’ve been planting, seeding and identifying native plants, and removing invasive species all while trying to grow fruit trees (native like elderberries and pawpaws, but also some non-natives commercial production varieties like Lapins cherries and Keifer pears).
So, since I’ve learned quite a bit, I thought it might be good to give back to the native plant community in a small way with a coloring book (hopefully a series of coloring books) that is educational, fun, and free to print.
Native Plants Organizations
I’m certainly not the first to develop a coloring book about native plants, and I doubt I’ll be the last. Many states have Master Gardeners and Native Plant Societies that provide free coloring books for their state, but I have yet to find one that mentions the ecoregions within the state.
So, the approach I’m taking is to sort the plants by Ecoregion rather than by state. My first coloring book is for the North American Level 1 Ecoregion called Eastern Temperate Forests, and which covers a wide swath of Eastern North America, but this unfortunately means that the more specific ecoregions might not be native areas for all of these plants. So, I intend to make native plant coloring books for each of the 15 level 1 ecoregions, but also for the more specific level 2,3, and 4 Ecoregions – which amounts to over a thousand coloring books for several thousand native plants.
Coloring Books for All
I want to provide coloring books that are not only fun, but also educational. Each page of the coloring book has a few sentences about the native plant – which I think separates this coloring book from the pack.
This is clearly going to be a lot of work, so if anyone would like to help, please let me know. I set up a website to catalogue and download the pdf versions of the coloring books at Native Plants Coloring Books. A printed version can also be found on Amazon.