Kelly D. Norris

Kelly D. Norris Plantsman, planting designer, artist, author working to plant the world a better place! Award-winning author and plantsman.

The first director of horticulture at Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden (Des Moines, Iowa). Creator of Three Oaks Garden (Des Moines, Iowa).

A year ago today, we were reveling in the ruderal splendor of The Trolley Line, a short-term installation we began last ...
09/09/2026

A year ago today, we were reveling in the ruderal splendor of The Trolley Line, a short-term installation we began last year at . This garden will ultimately be remade after some house construction projects are completed, but it has provided a working case study in designed seeding and stewardship strategies that intersect with a unique story of our place. We live in a historic trolley car neighborhood, and one of the former lines is visible from our property (now a public trail). This seeding (with some key structural plantings like Symphyotrichum oblongifolium, Andropogon gerardii, and Yucca flaccida) reimagines the ruderal plant communities that once formed along railway corridors across the Midwest as prairie species came to occupy novel niches with new neighbors. Of any chapter of the garden, this is easily the most narrative and literal. We included only species with a documented history along railroads. The garden has become a prototype for another project we will install next spring, complete with repurposed rails as we used here. You can learn more about this project and see more photos on our website: https://www.kellydnorris.com/projects/trolleyline.

ABOUT: Kelly D. Norris is an award-winning plantsman and author based at Three Oaks Garden in Des Moines, Iowa. His studio explores the intersections of people, plants, and place through ecological, site-specific design and art. Kelly and his team specialize in creating diverse and dynamic gardens that reimagine places for consilient encounters with the natural world. For more information or to discuss a possible commission, please contact via the link in the bio!

The September view of the here at . Peak spider season. Andropogon gerardii (big bluestem) matrix, initially installe...
09/08/2026

The September view of the here at . Peak spider season. Andropogon gerardii (big bluestem) matrix, initially installed at low density with five different genotypes, has grown into a steady, consistent foundation for a bevy of native forbs. We thin the stand once per year (it's ambitious like that), as if imitating a herd of buffalo, grazing and pulling to thin its crowns and draw down its biomass. Coreopsis tripteris (tall tickseed), another subject of annual thinning, looms on the horizon like the thunderheads forecasted for later this afternoon. The fall installation commences any (dry) day now...

ABOUT: Kelly D. Norris is an award-winning plantsman and author based at Three Oaks Garden in Des Moines, Iowa. His studio explores the intersections of people, plants, and place through ecological, site-specific design and art. Kelly’s garden work has been featured in The New York Times, Better Homes and Gardens, Martha Stewart Living, Fine Gardening, Garden Design, and in numerous television, radio, and digital media appearances. His latest book Your Natural Garden debuted in 2025 from Cool Springs Press. Kelly and his team specialize in creating diverse and dynamic gardens that reimagine places for consilient encounters with the natural world. For more information or to discuss a possible commission, please contact via the link in the bio!

September. My favorite month if I had to pick one. The start of fall planting season. The forthcoming arrival of autumn....
09/03/2026

September. My favorite month if I had to pick one. The start of fall planting season. The forthcoming arrival of autumn. The dessert of the growing year.

It's also a busy month, especially because we've launched registration for the *award-winning* Fall Cohort of the New Naturalism Academy. We learned a few weeks ago that the Fall Cohort received the 2026 GardenComm Silver Laurel Media Award from Garden Communicators International for Digital Special Projects (courses, apps, etc.) If you're a landscape professional looking for an immersive, jam-packed experience that bridges horticulture, ecology, and design, I hope you'll consider joining us. Each year, we refine the curriculum and tap into the latest research to inform planting theory and practice. You can learn more and sign up at https://www.kellydnorris.com/course.

📸 at the bridge from August into September, through the years.

ABOUT: Kelly D. Norris is an award-winning plantsman and author based at Three Oaks Garden in Des Moines, Iowa. His studio explores the intersections of people, plants, and place through ecological, site-specific design and art. Kelly’s garden work has been featured in The New York Times, Better Homes and Gardens, Martha Stewart Living, Fine Gardening, Garden Design, and in numerous television, radio, and digital media appearances. His latest book Your Natural Garden debuted in 2025 from Cool Springs Press. Kelly and his team specialize in creating diverse and dynamic gardens that reimagine places for consilient encounters with the natural world. For more information or to discuss a possible commission, please contact via the link in the bio!

The first day back to work from vacation is always a bit rocky. I'm pulled in various directions for matters close at ha...
09/01/2026

The first day back to work from vacation is always a bit rocky. I'm pulled in various directions for matters close at hand, but my mind is still processing the experiences of the past few weeks in England.

Today, I keep coming back to the plantings by / for Potter's Field Park in central London. While young and still developing, the early phases of this landscape coming into focus during a historically dry and hot year left a deep impression. The work represents an emerging methodology of using recycled substrates (i.e., sand, crushed concrete, etc.) to create lean, stress-forward plant communities that operate with the systemic rigor required inside the urban envelope of human disturbance. The site is generally flat, but the planting plane features rolling mounds of recycled sand in the neighborhood of 12-15 inches deep (approx. 400 mm according to Darryl's previous posts). This introduces the kind of microtopography you'd see in precedent environments in nature. In Darryl's words: "The objective of ecological planting is not to create a naturalistic aesthetic but to provide the appropriate conditions for plants to dynamically inhabit their environment according to their life cycle strategies. The look and feel will follow the function. At a glance the complexity built into the scheme is not necessarily readable, which is the desired effect." Yet, the repeated use of silver tones throughout the various modules organizes the effort visually in a way that makes it legible and coherent as you experience the place. Bravo!

It'll take me some time to work through my notes and photos from the last 10 days in England, a mix of garden sightseein...
08/30/2026

It'll take me some time to work through my notes and photos from the last 10 days in England, a mix of garden sightseeing and speaking at the symposium, Connections through Time. I return creatively recharged and stimulated by great gardens and great gardeners, all persisting through a historic drought. At times, the conference felt like an IRL version of my Instagram feed, and it was wonderful to connect with so many folks I'd only previously encountered online.

📸 Prairie Meditation 2a. I featured this digital collage I did last winter as an opening slide in my lecture, which I titled A Gentle Plea for Nuance. Prairie, at least in the conceptual sense, continues to shape the mechanics of so much modern planting design. Yet in this era of AI, which thrives on reductionism, we should lean into complexity and nuance to better understand not only the places that inspire us but the places we live with.

An homage to Eragrostis trichodes (sand lovegrass), approaching the peak of its powers in our August garden. Found acros...
08/19/2026

An homage to Eragrostis trichodes (sand lovegrass), approaching the peak of its powers in our August garden. Found across the broader Great Plains on sandy soils derived from our glacial past. Its tendency to seed around is limited to the areas where we have sand and gravel, no doubt thanks to the adjacent limitations of heavy clay. Some individuals remain more upright than others, but this is a small price to pay for its diaphanous presentation. Sharing these to the feed from the story… too good not too!

An August tableau, nearly the view from the dining room windows. There's something almost universal about the prevalence...
08/18/2026

An August tableau, nearly the view from the dining room windows. There's something almost universal about the prevalence of yellow and gold flowers in August. When I toured with my book Plants With Style a decade ago, I could ask audiences almost anywhere in North America what color August was and, without fail, get a common answer. The aster family carries the banner for the month: Coreopsis, Helianthus, Rudbeckia, and on and on. Chamaecrista fasciculata (partridge pea) has had a banner year, germinating from the archives of the seed bank, the bounty of which has no memory here. I'm writing about this phenomenon of abundance through the lens of weeding this month for my newsletter. That and other news are dropping later this week. Sign up at the link in my bio!

ABOUT: Kelly D. Norris is an award-winning plantsman and author based at Three Oaks Garden in Des Moines, Iowa. His studio explores the intersections of people, plants, and place through ecological, site-specific design and art. Kelly’s garden work has been featured in The New York Times, Better Homes and Gardens, Martha Stewart Living, Fine Gardening, Garden Design, and in numerous television, radio, and digital media appearances. His latest book Your Natural Garden debuted in 2025 from Cool Springs Press. Kelly and his team specialize in creating diverse and dynamic gardens that reimagine places for consilient encounters with the natural world. For more information or to discuss a possible commission, please contact via the link in the bio!

A texturally rich but florally subdued part of the garden right now. As I've prepared my remarks for the Connections th...
08/17/2026

A texturally rich but florally subdued part of the garden right now. As I've prepared my remarks for the Connections through Time symposium this past week, I'm reminded that for all the spectacles the prairie lands can offer, many times of the year are relatively green and textural. We try to celebrate these contrasts as much as we can, with silver and blue tones juxtaposed with greens like those of Yucca 'Excalibur', Juniperus horizontalis 'Hughes', and Lonicera reticulata 'Kintzley's Ghost' shown here.

ABOUT: Kelly D. Norris is an award-winning plantsman and author based at Three Oaks Garden in Des Moines, Iowa. His studio explores the intersections of people, plants, and place through ecological, site-specific design and art. Kelly’s garden work has been featured in The New York Times, Better Homes and Gardens, Martha Stewart Living, Fine Gardening, Garden Design, and in numerous television, radio, and digital media appearances. His latest book Your Natural Garden debuted in 2025 from Cool Springs Press. Kelly and his team specialize in creating diverse and dynamic gardens that reimagine places for consilient encounters with the natural world. For more information or to discuss a possible commission, please contact via the link in the bio!

Sunrise in last week. The prairie border at peak exuberance, anchored by a generous fountain of Panicum 'Bad Hair Day'...
08/15/2026

Sunrise in last week. The prairie border at peak exuberance, anchored by a generous fountain of Panicum 'Bad Hair Day' (Bad Hair Day switchgrass). We're pleased with the proportions and the overall atmosphere after working through several design challenges in this area over the last few seasons. This was the former location of the deck when I bought the property in 2017. Some of the best soil on the property is here, intermingled with pea gravel of varying depths (left over from the underlayment of the deck). Unexpectedly, we ended up with a new heat pump on this side of the house last fall, which turned out to be a welcome design constraint. We resolved it with the lucky addition of three large Euonymus atropurpureus (eastern wahoo) this spring; treasured gifts. This scaffold added just enough mass to bring the grassier center of the border into sharper focus. We also gained another habitat feature for birdwatching. Each view from the house is carefully considered and framed. Our garden is a creative refuge and studio, but also deeply personal. The pleasures of gardening do not exist separately from the reality that the garden is also deeply connected to the ecology of its place; no dichotomies needed.

ABOUT: Kelly D. Norris is an award-winning plantsman and author based at Three Oaks Garden in Des Moines, Iowa. His studio explores the intersections of people, plants, and place through ecological, site-specific design and art. His latest book Your Natural Garden debuted in 2025 from Cool Springs Press. Kelly and his team specialize in creating diverse and dynamic gardens that reimagine places for consilient encounters with the natural world. For more information or to discuss a possible commission, please contact via the link in the bio!

Recent inspiration images on the boards, informing current planting design commissions for installation in 2027. Today, ...
08/13/2026

Recent inspiration images on the boards, informing current planting design commissions for installation in 2027. Today, the dry prairie vibes of here at feel like a form of escapism (it's been raining since 7 a.m. this morning, and more is in the forecast, including a flooding advisory).

In this view, three species of grasses form the primary matrix along a reclaimed concrete (urbanite) path: Sporobolus compositus (rough dropseed), Eragrostis spectabilis (purple lovegrass), and Muhlenbergia cuspidata (prairie satin grass). The rough dropseed forms patches over time, one of which you can see in the green blur in the back of the photo. In the mid-ground, the fine-textured fountains of the prairie satin grass interrupt droves of Monarda puncata (spotted horsemint). The rose-colored fog of purple lovegrass finds its way into gaps. It does not persist well enough to be a consistent matrix species, but often with enough disturbance, limited competition and appropriate soil texture, can remain part of a planted system for many years.

📸 August 2025

ABOUT: Kelly D. Norris is an award-winning plantsman and author based at Three Oaks Garden in Des Moines, Iowa. His studio explores the intersections of people, plants, and place through ecological, site-specific design and art. Kelly’s garden work has been featured in The New York Times, Better Homes and Gardens, Martha Stewart Living, Fine Gardening, Garden Design, and in numerous television, radio, and digital media appearances. His latest book Your Natural Garden debuted in 2025 from Cool Springs Press. Kelly and his team specialize in creating diverse and dynamic gardens that reimagine places for consilient encounters with the natural world. For more information or to discuss a possible commission, please contact via the link in the bio!

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