Sleepy Cat Natives

@sleepycatnatives

Sleepy Cat Natives specializes in PNW native seeds. We offer 48 species; including annuals, perennials, and shrubs! Bring the PNW to your garden! www.sleepycatnatives.com

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Sleepy Cat Natives@sleepycatnatives· 2d

Even more lovely native late season bloomers! #nativeplants #nativegarden #pnw #gardening #flowers #bloomscrolling

Douglas Spirea (also called Rose Spirea) will be blooming for another month at least. It's a favorite of Bumblebees and is a fantastic native substitute for the invasive Butterfly Bush.

Great Northern Aster is also blooming now, and will continue for a couple of months! This lovely Aster can be grown as an understory plant in your woodland garden.

Coyote Mint and Orange Bush Monkey flower have been blooming for months now, and are still offering fresh flowers to pollinators! Orange Bush Monkey flower will greatly benefit from a little supplemental water through the hot summer to look it's best.

Elegant Tarweed is a very showy (and lovely smelling) native annual that has been blooming for a month now, and will continue for another couple months.

Sleepy Cat Natives@sleepycatnatives· 5d

Here's a few more late blooming PNW wildflowers that can deliver color to your garden now! #nativeplants #nativegarden #pnw #flowers #gardening #bloomscrolling

California Beeplant is an understated wildflower that packs a huge nectar punch for wildlife. It's loved by bumblebees and hummingbirds.

Columbia Coreopsis is a very airy wildflower with multiple flowers on tall thin stems. It's typically a biennial but can occasionally be an annual.

Blanketflower is a super colorful, super loooong blooming wildflower. Often continuing to bloom deep into Winter!

While not exactly a wildflower, Coyote Bush is a must mention for late season flowers! This is one of the most valuable wildlife plants that can be added to your native garden. It supports a huge variety of pollinators and predatory insects, not to mention song birds, hummingbirds and tree frogs! It's flower buds are only just starting to form. =)

Sleepy Cat Natives@sleepycatnatives· 6d

Looking for late season color for your garden? There are a few great options native to the PNW blooming now! #nativeplants #nativegarden #lateseasonflowers #pnw #gardening #flowers #bloomscrolling

Pearly Everlasting has been blooming for a few weeks now and will likely continue for another month and a half!

Scarlet Monkeyflower has been blooming for a little over a month now, but with supplemental water it'll continue to bloom for a few more weeks.

Goldenrod has also been blooming for over a month now and while some of the flower plumes are fading it is still sending up fresh flowers. Goldenrod attracts a huge variety of pollinators and predatory insects, second only to Coyote Bush (which is only just starting to form it's flower buds).

Hall's Aster has just opened it's first three flowers on our farm and will continue to bloom heavily for a couple months.

Sleepy Cat Natives@sleepycatnatives· 8d

Douglas Aster opened it's first flower of the season on the farm yesterday! #nativeplants #nativegarden #pnw #bloomscrolling #gardening

Douglas Aster is a very valuable late season food source for pollinators, and a great way to liven up the native garden when most of our other natives have finished for the year.

Sleepy Cat Natives@sleepycatnatives· 9d

Pacific Asters are starting to bloom in NW Oregon! #nativeplants #nativegarden #bloomscrolling #pnw

Pacific Asters are great plants for both container gardening and in ground flower beds.

Sleepy Cat Natives@sleepycatnatives· 23d

Very happy to announce that Coyote Mint (Monardella villosa) and Thimbleberry (Rubus parviflorus) seeds from our 2026 harvest are now available! #nativeplants #nativegarden #gardening #plants #PNW #California #flowers #nativeseed

Coyote Mint provides a rich source of nectar for pollinators and blooms for such a long time. As an added benefit it smells divine!

Thimbleberry is such a beautiful shrub. I find it incredibly relaxing to look at. Most of this shrub's leaves are angled on nearly the same plane bringing some very interesting texture to a woodland garden bed

Sleepy Cat Natives@sleepycatnatives· 28d

Natives can also make fantastic companions for your veggie garden! Check out our mass planting of Elegant Tarweed that both dresses up the garden's deer fence and draws in the pollinators! #nativeplants #companionplanting #gardening #flowers #pnw #permiculture #backyardhabitat

This beautiful yellow wall is self sown from Elegant Tarweed I planted last year! It's an excellent pollinator plant, has a very yummy resinous pineapple-ish smell for us humans, and the deer don't like it!

Elegant Tarweed helps draw in more pollinators for our Zucchini and green beans!

These yellow flowers will roll up tight in the afternoon heat to conserve water, and will open again when the sun starts to set in the evening. It would be interesting to do a moth survey to see how many species visit this plant throughout the night!

Elegant Tarweed flowers have so many interesting color variations, sometimes even on the same plant!

Sleepy Cat Natives@sleepycatnatives· Jul 9

Bleeding Heart and Seaside Daisy seeds are back in stock! These are the fresh 2026 crop. www.sleepycatnatives.com #nativeplants #nativeseed #gardening #backyardhabitat #pnw

Summer is the ideal time to sow Bleeding Heart, as they require a three cycle warm - cold - warm moist stratification period to break dormancy. You might be able to skip this period with freshly harvested seeds!

Seaside Daisies are such a lovely, long blooming, easy going ground cover for West Coast gardens!

Sleepy Cat Natives@sleepycatnatives· Jun 23

Wildflower Spotlight! I'd like to introduce you to a lesser known, yet gorgeous and very garden worthy native thistle called Short Styled Thistle. This beauty is a very well behaved wildflower with very high wildlife value! #gardening #flowers #wildlife #nativeplants #nativegarden #pnw #oregon

Short Styled Thistle flower bud forming.

These lovely Thistles can grow anywhere from 2-5 feet tall. They prefer part shade - shade making them excellent for your native woodland garden bed!

Short Styled Thistle prickles are slightly softer than the exotic, invasive thistles. These beauties won't take over your yard like the invasives either!

These Thistle flowers have a lovely cobwebby appearance.

Sleepy Cat Natives@sleepycatnatives· Jun 11

Blown away by the Showy Milkweed display in Southern Oregon his weekend! It's in full flower display with Oregon Sunshine and the Monarchs are moving through! #nativeplants #nativeplantrestoration #Klamathriver #southernoregon #butterflies #flowers #pnw

Milkweed in full flower with Milkweed beetles.

Milkweed in full flower with both White and Black Oaks in the background.

Milkweed in full flower with a huge patch of Oregon Sunshine in the background!

Sleepy Cat Natives@sleepycatnatives· May 25

I noticed an interesting discrepancy in the blooming stages of 10 Oregon Sunshine plants, all of which are planted along our driveway within ~30 feet of each other. Here are photos of 4 of the plants taken yesterday. =) #nativegarden #nativeplants #gardening #flowers #pnw

This lovely is the only one in full bloom at the moment. It's planted along the South Eastern side of an arborvitae hedge. It's the second one to lose the sun in the evenings (around 2pm).

This Oregon Sunshine is only 5 feet away (north) from the plant in the first photo along the same arborvitae hedge. It loses the sun about 20 minutes sooner than the plant in the first photo.

This Oregon Sunshine is directly across from the plant in the second photo, approximately 12 feet to the West. It loses the sun last (around 7pm).

This is the largest patch of Oregon Sunshine. It is roughly 20 feet further north from the plant in the third photo, and loses the light ~ 6:30pm.

Sleepy Cat Natives@sleepycatnatives· May 17

More Spring flowers for your enjoyment! #nativegarden #nativeplants #flowers #gardening #pnw

Thimbleberries are showing off their papery flowers!

Sea Thrift is beginning to flower, and looking lovely!

I have quite a few Oregon Sunshine plants scattered throughout the farm, and noticed that they are not all on the same bloom schedule. This one near the driveway entrance is the first of the plants to bloom. There's a
very large plant next to our house (150 ft away) that is about half way to achieving full bloom, and all of the others have unopened blossoms. It's neat to watch!

All of the Riverbank Lupines are fully loaded with flowers, and the bumblebees are happy!

Sleepy Cat Natives@sleepycatnatives· May 10

Happy Mothers Day! #mothersday #thankful #love #appreciation

Douglas Meadowfoam exploding with spring flowers

Sleepy Cat Natives@sleepycatnatives· Apr 28

More lovely wildflowers to enjoy! Continuing to wish everyone a happy Spring! #nativeplants #nativegarden #gardening #flowers #pnw #spring

The Dark Throat Shooting Stars in my shade garden are just starting to bloom. They're a few weeks later than the Shooting Stars growing in areas with full sun.

And, all of my Riverbank Lupines are loaded with blossoms! This bush is at the beginning of our driveway where it receives a couple hours more sun per day, which is allowing it to open it's flowers first!

Sleepy Cat Natives@sleepycatnatives· Apr 21

Happy spring wildflowers for your enjoyment! #nativeplants #nativegarden #flowers #gardening #pnw

This pretty Iris is Canyon Snow. A gorgeous cultivar of the native Douglas Iris. In my garden it is blooming hard, and quite a bit earlier than the standard species (which doesn't appear to have blossoms yet).

Oregon Iris is starting to pop! I have quite a few Oregon Iris plants growing on the farm, and this beauty is the first one to bloom this year!

Seablush is blooming! I've had quite a challenge getting these little guys started with direct sowing. Guess I just needed to let them do it for me. These beauties self-seeded from a pot I purchased at a nursery last year!

This fall I'm planning to sow a bunch of pots of these little gems to see if the magic will strike twice!

Dark Throat Shooting Stars are blooming everywhere!! For how delicate they look, they are surprisingly easy to grow from seed and handle transplanting like a champ!

Sleepy Cat Natives@sleepycatnatives· Apr 12

Dark Throat Shooting Star growing through Twinberry Honeysuckle leaves! #nativeflowers #nativeplants #gardening #flowers #pnw

Dark Throat Shooting Stars are starting to bloom all over the yard! Hurray for Spring!

Sleepy Cat Natives@sleepycatnatives· Mar 12

Dreaming of drier planting weather with moist (not drenched) soils! #nativegarden #nativeplants #plantingweatherdance #pnw

Grass Widows should make themselves known soon!

Sleepy Cat Natives@sleepycatnatives· Mar 10

Here are a few more perennial native plants that produce seeds without any germination requirements! #nativeplants #nativegarden #flowers #garden #pnw #seeds

Willamette Valley Gumweed (also known as Puget Sound Gumweed) is an important long blooming pollinator plant and short lived perennial. It's flowers are also an excellent addition to oil infusions for salves; having similar properties to Calendula.

Yarrow is a wonderful and easy to grow long flowering pollinator plant. It attracts a wide variety of insects including native bees, butterflies, beetles, parasitic flies, and native parasitic wasps! It's also an excellent lawn substitute! It takes mowing and foot traffic like a champ, stays green year around without water, and spreads via rhizomes and seeds staying competitive with weeds!

Salal is a fantastic evergreen shrub with meaty, tasty edible and nutritious berries. It does grow slowly at first, but is an excellent ground cover when given a chance.

Large Leaf Avens isn't the flashiest of our native wildflowers, but it thrives in very moist and shady environments where other plants may struggle. It's an valuable long flowering food source for pollinators and is a host plant for moths and butterflies!

Sleepy Cat Natives@sleepycatnatives· Mar 7

It feels a little early, but my flowering currants are starting to bloom here in NW Oregon! #nativeplant #nativegarden #flowers #gardening #pnw #earlyspring #hummingbirdgarden #plantsky

Red Flowering Currant blossoms preparing to open glowing in golden hour.

Naturally occurring White variation of our Native Red Flowering Currant. This beauty tends to start blooming a couple of weeks ahead of it's Red Flowering neighbor.

Sleepy Cat Natives@sleepycatnatives· Mar 1

Here are a few more perennial native plants that produce seeds without any germination requirements! #nativeplants #nativegarden #gardening #flowers #westcoast #plantsky #pnw #bloomscrolling

Scarlet Monkeyflower is a super showy, moisture loving native perennial that is a hummingbird favorite!

Prairie Junegrass is a lovely native clumping grass that's a host plant for Skipper butterflies!

Pacific Aster is a huge draw for pollinators late in the season. Here two Skipper butterflies enjoy the nectar this aster offers.

Pearly Everlasting is a wonderful late season blooming wildflower. These flowers are excellent for bouquets and dried flower arrangements.

Sleepy Cat Natives@sleepycatnatives· Feb 20

Here are some perennial native plants that have seeds without any germination requirements! #nativeseeds #nativeplants #nativegarden #gardening #flowers #pnw #oregon #westcoast #wildlifegardening #pollinators

Douglas Aster is a superb pollinator plant. An Oregon State University study looking at native plants and native pollinators found that Douglas Aster attracted the highest diversity of visiting bee species, as well as, the highest abundance of visiting bees compared to the other native flowers in the study.

Goldenrod is another superb pollinator plant. The lovely yellow flowers attract all manner of bees, but is particularly attractive to native wasps. Native wasps are not aggressive to people, and are powerful allies in the garden as they feed on garden pests!

Blanket Flowers is a wonderful late blooming, highly drought tolerant, inland perennial. This lovely flower often continues to bloom through the first couple of late Fall - early Winter hard frosts before finally going dormant.

Seaside Daisy is an invaluable low growing ground cover for the maritime West Coast! In it's native range it's evergreen and when happy will spread out to ~2' wide and will be covered in flowers from May- August. I've had my plants continue to produce flowers into October!

Sleepy Cat Natives@sleepycatnatives· Feb 17

If you haven't started your native seed sowing project yet, don't despair! Many species need only a brief period of moist stratification, and yet others don't require any special treatments! Here are some great examples! #nativeplants #nativegarden #alwaysbesowing #gardening #flowers #pnw #seeds

Lance-leaf Self Heal only needs a short 20-30 day stratification to germinate. This lovely plant is a wonderful groundcover and works well incorporated into a native lawn replacement. It can take mowing and light-medium foot traffic.

Coyote Bush has no germination requirements, though a little (7-10 days) cold moist stratification may improve germination rates. This is a fantastic wildlife shrub. It provides late season food for all sorts of pollinators, and song birds love it for food (insects), roosting, and nesting!
It's evergreen and makes a fantastic garden specimen and hedge plant!

Sea Thrift is another adorable little ground cover requiring only 30 days of cold moist stratification. It is evergreen and is loved by tiny carpenter bees when in bloom!

While the cheery Oregon Sunshine generally requires 30-60 days of cold moist stratification, I often find it germinates on the shorter end of that range. They are evergreen and also make a lovely ground cover.

Sleepy Cat Natives@sleepycatnatives· Feb 14

Here's a little native flower show for your Valentine's Day pleasure! #nativeplants #nativegarden #flowers #garden #pnw #bloomscrolling #sharingcheer

No V-day flower show is complete without the lovely Western Bleeding Heart!

Nodding Onions are such lovely Spring Wildflowers! They are so easy to start from seed, wildlife tends to avoid them, and their an edible true onion!

Meadow Checkermallow is a very special hollyhock like wildflower endemic to the Willamette Valley. Not only is it gorgeous and tough, it's also a native vegetable! The leaves are highly nutritious and can be used like spinach in salads or soups etc.

Salal is such a lovely evergreen shrub and ground cover. It has visual interest year around, though it is most showy when in bloom or loaded with berries.

Sleepy Cat Natives@sleepycatnatives· Feb 12

Spring definitely feels like it is coming too soon! The abnormally warm weather is confusing plants, and seeds alike! If your planning to sow native seeds do it soon to ensure a long enough stratification period! #nativegarden #nativeplants #earlyspring #gardening #pnw

Baby tree frogs are already hopping around! Found this little guy hunting in the grass near a Salal and Sea Thrift bed I was weeding! If you look past the grass you can also see Elegant Tarweed seedlings!

First flower of the season for my native White Flowering Currant! This is a naturally occurring White version of our native Red Flowering Currant. It tends to flower a few weeks earlier than it's red flowering neighbor, but still this is early!

My native seeds are pretty confused at the moment. These were all started in December, with the hope of a good stratification. Many haven't received enough cold even still.

I was surprised to discover the annual Wild Sunflower seeds are mostly germinated already! They don't germinate until the soil temps are consistently 50 F!

Sleepy Cat Natives@sleepycatnatives· Feb 10

Let's go pink in celebration of February! #nativeplants #nativegarden #flowers #gardening #pnw #oregon #pinkflowers #nativeseed #vday

Farewell to Spring glowing in the afternoon sunshine! This lovely annual is such an easy going plant. Start the seeds early and you'll never have to water and you'll have a perpetual flower show for years!
(Remember to leave the stocks to let them reseed!)

The adorable pink puff ball flowers of Seablush on a warm Spring day. This little wildflower is another native annual that loves seasonally wet areas and is often seen growing with Camas in the Willamette Valley. It too will happily self sow when happy for years of future flowers!

Another lovely native pink pompom flower! This one is Sea Thrift or Sea Pink. It's a very cute little evergreen perennial ground cover with grass like leaves. This one is loved by tiny carpenter bees that swarm the flowers on warm summer days.

A lovely queen Bumblebee feeding from a Nootka flower. This is a tough wild rose! This rose was planted in full sun 7 years ago and has grown happily without supplemental water for all but 2 months of that time. And, those flowers! They have a lovely papery appearance and smell like an English rose garden!

Sleepy Cat Natives@sleepycatnatives· Feb 4

Want a native to fill a small space in full sun? Want it to bloom a long time and smell amazing? Consider Coyote Mint! It blooms all summer-fall, smells like a desert mint (yummy!), is evergreen, and is a bee powerhouse! #nativeplants #bees #nativegardening #flower #gardening #westcoast #fragrant

A cuckoo wasp (Chrysis angolensis) feeding from a Coyote Mint flower!

Carpenter bees feeding from a Coyote Mint flower

Gorgeous Bumblebee catching the sun while also feeding from a Coyote Mint flower!

Coyote Mint can grow ~2 ft tall while in bloom. The rest of the year it's roughly 1-1.5 ft tall and up to 2 ft wide. It's beautiful pompom flowers blend well into most flower gardens! It loves full sun, but can tolerate part sun. And, has very low - no need for supplemental water.

Sleepy Cat Natives@sleepycatnatives· Feb 2

Wildflower spotlight! Willamette Valley Gumweed, also known as Puget Sound Gumweed, is a lovely and extremely tough wildflower native from Oregon to BC. In addition to being very beneficial for insects, it has a healing resin great for salve infusions! #nativeplants #gardening #flowers #pnw #oregon

Willamette Valley Gumweed grows well in moist to bone dry conditions. and is a great plant for fencelines and hedgerow needing little to no summer water.

This pretty Willamette Valley Gumweed is growing out from a patch of weedy pasture grass on the side of a road. It is growing in very poor brick hard gravel clay with no irrigation!

This beautiful Willamette Valley Gumweed is growing in the middle of a bone dry pasture in full sun, also with no supplemental water!

Sleepy Cat Natives@sleepycatnatives· Jan 30

Native plants can be a valuable addition to your food garden, both feeding you and attracting pollinators to your other crops! We have many edible & delicious native berries, nuts, seeds, and roots growing naturally in the PNW! #nativeplants #nativegarden #nativefood #gardening #garden #pnw #bees

Blackcap Raspberry is such a decadent treat! It's the perfect forest dessert. A natural berry with an almost candy raspberry flavor!

Did you know Nodding Onion is a true onion? It's completely edible, with a stronger onion flavor than cultivated varieties.

Salal berries are a little more meaty in texture than berries most people are accustomed to, but they are delicious and highly nutritious. They're high in antioxidents, minerals, and have protein rich seeds!

Thimbleberry is such a lovely shrub. It's the only thornless bramble native to the West Coast, and it's delicate, delicious berries are like eating jam from the plant!

Sleepy Cat Natives@sleepycatnatives· Jan 29

Wildflower spotlight! Riverbank Lupine is a big beautiful West Coast native. It's a very showy evergreen, an excellent ground cover/weed suppressor, and nitrogen fixing! It generally grows more like a biennial and self sows easily! #nativeplants #nativegarden #gardening #flowers #westcoast

Riverbank Lupine can reach up to 4 ft tall when happy. It's very showy and highly appreciated by the native bees!

California Poppy and Riverbank Lupine make such lovely companions!

Riverbank Lupine leaves are gorgeous bedecked in frost, snow, and water droplets! This beauty is a seedling from a mother plant of the previous year. They grow quick! Their first years growth is generally roots, stems, leaves, with a light flower show. The second year is more green growth and a huge flower display!

Sleepy Cat Natives@sleepycatnatives· Jan 26

Here's a West Coast native wildflower for that shady dry corner! Bolander's Phacelia is a bumblebee favorite that's super easy going! It flowers a lot around May in NW Oregon and will self seed when happy. #nativegarden #nativeplants #westcoast #flowers #gardening #woodland #shadegarden #pollinator