A surprising number of the common flowers in our gardens are exotic imports. Increasing the proportion of native plants will put your garden at the forefront of a modern movement.

Growing interest in naturalistic gardens, with their rich interplay of color and texture, has boosted awareness of the beauty and importance of native plants in both the design and ecology of gardens. You don't have to plant exclusively natives to capture the look, but native plants are an obvious choice. They evolved to thrive in the various local conditions around the country, so they're easier to take care of than beautiful but marginally hardy or finicky exotics. Native plants support pollinators, provide habitat for birds and bugs, and require fewer resources to maintain than most non-natives. Make room for natives among traditional favorite flowers, and you will be delighted by the life they bring to your garden.

The easiest way to get native plants into your garden is to fill any empty spot with them. You don't have to get rid of your big mop-head hydrangeas, peonies or other hardy non-natives -- just allow native plants to share space with them. Native flowers such as butterfly milkweed, coneflowers, penstemon and phlox, among others, look great and thrive planted side-by-side with existing perennials and shrubs in flower beds. They are also good for the environment.

"These are all solid native plants that provide benefits for nature," says Peggy Anne Montgomery, a spokeswoman for American Beauties Native Plants. American Beauties is a branding program that works with growers to help increase the availability and diversity of native plants in garden shops. "We finally have the wind in our sails, and it's because of the whole thing with bees," Montgomery says.

Not so many years ago, all insects were considered pests. Gardeners wanted to limit them, control them or eradicate them. Now gardeners are encouraging pollinators -- and bees are among the most important of these -- with native plants that provide nectar and shelter through the seasons. Gardens with native plants support an astonishing variety of good bugs, says Neil Diboll, owner of Prairie Nursery in Westfield, Wisconsin. Good bugs help keep the population of bad bugs in check, limiting pest problems among ornamental and edible plants. Instead of reaching for pesticides, "now we're planting preservation gardens," says Diboll, who, for almost 40 years, has been a champion of native plants.

Native plants are appropriate in gardens of every size and style, in urban, suburban and rural settings. They're pretty in pots on patios and look terrific in balcony and rooftop gardens. Native plants are the refreshingly stylish and modern element in municipal flowerbeds, offering a drive-by lesson in grace and diversity. At botanic gardens and nature centers, displays of native plants give home gardeners a lot of new ideas to take home with them.

The appeal is broad. Professional garden designers and landscape architects are specifying native plants in their designs to enliven traditional landscapes with a fresh look. In corporate landscapes, plantings of natives instead of traditional swaths of identical annual flowers look modern and up to date and show that businesses are good ecological stewards, because natives naturally do not require insecticides, herbicides or pesticides to thrive.

The selection of native plants at garden shops has grown, but natives themselves are really nothing new. "Most of our plants are from the mid-Pleistocene," Diboll says. So-called "new natives" are actually what the professionals call nativars, combining the words native and cultivar (or cultivated variety). These are native plants that have been selected for larger flowers, for example, or a longer bloom period. Nativars may be more compact than the original natives from which they are derived, or they might be hardier, or have more spectacular fall color. They represent what some professionals consider the best of both natives and hybrids.

Nativars are controversial because they're usually propagated by cuttings or divisions, so they don't pass along the genetic diversity of a truly native seed-grown population. Diboll offers only native species grown from open-pollinated seed. American Beauties includes nativars in its selections, but the company evaluates these choices carefully, Montgomery says, and labels them appropriately. In her own garden in Pennsylvania, natives, nativars and many non-native plants all grow happily together.

Even a few natives will make a difference in a garden. Jason Delaney, a garden designer in St. Louis, is a daffodil collector (daffodils are Old World plants) who recommends natives to clients and grows them at home, too. A diverse garden "attracts not only myriad beneficial insects, but also small birds and mammals," he says. "Even tiny urban gardens can successfully support an array of wildlife." Native plants help make them feel right at home.

SOURCES:

-- Prairie Nursery sells native seeds, plants, seed mixes and plans for native-plant gardens, including butterfly habitat gardens, rain gardens, gardens for songbirds, and more; prairienursery.com.

-- American Beauties Native Plants are available at garden centers and by mail through gardencrossings.com. The company's website includes resources for gardeners and garden designers, including detailed plant descriptions and garden plans; abnativeplants.com.

It's a good time to take a look at last year's gardening successes and failures, savoring the better accomplishments and trying to learn something useful from the not-so-good. It's time for a few New Year's gardening resolutions.

New Year's resolutions are often intimidating or even a little depressing -- and the fact is, most of them are scrapped before the end of January. But gardening resolutions are low-pressure pledges. "I see them more as goals, or even like a dream," says Karen Beaty, a horticulturist at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, Texas. Beaty is in charge of the Wildflower Center's 4.5-acre family garden. At the end of the gardening season, "I think of what we did and what we can do better next year," she says. On those terms, resolutions aren't burdensome: They're full of promise, just like a package of seeds.

This year, Beaty has pledged to document the development of the garden more thoroughly. She's not thinking in terms of spreadsheets: She plans to take pictures of flower beds, making a record of the garden's growth through the seasons, highlighting plant combinations. She's going to photograph the installation of an underground irrigation system, so it doesn't get dug up later by mistake. She plans to take pictures from her favorite vantage points in the garden, and even to photograph things she doesn't like. "That way I can see what I want to do more of, and what I don't want to do more of," she says.

Beaty has also vowed to be more ruthless in her pruning practices this year. Pruning stimulates growth, after all, and she regrets not having trimmed long-blooming perennials in midsummer, to encourage them to continue producing flowers well into the fall. "I'm trying to coach myself to not be afraid to prune like that," she says. Salvia, bee balm, helianthus, coreopsis, purple coneflower and black-eyed Susans will all produce an extra flush of blooms if they're cut back in early summer. Of course, annual flowers, such as zinnias, cosmos and marigolds, also keep blooming heavily all summer long if you cut off the flowers as they fade.

Heather Sherwood, a horticulturist at the Chicago Botanic Garden, is concentrating on beneficial insects and pollinators in her gardening resolutions for 2018. In fact, she got started on this resolution in late fall, blowing autumn leaves off the lawn and into shrub and flower beds, where they serve as mulch, create a rich habitat for beneficial insects and, over time, decompose to add nutrients and micronutrients to the soil. "People used to think this was bad," Sherwood says, "but now we realize that good insects are in those leaves." Turning autumn leaves into a resource for the garden saves time that would otherwise be spent bagging the leaves and getting rid of them. It also saves money because she doesn't have to purchase mulch for the flower beds.

To make more pollinators feel welcome in the garden, Sherwood plans to install bee houses made with short lengths of bamboo, bundled together. Hang these bee houses from tree branches, and mason bees will find them. Sherwood protects pollinators at home, too: She keeps bees on the flat roof of her garage, where she harvested 50 jars of honey last year. "Bees are so cool," she says.

Taking care of pollinators is good for the health of food gardens, too. Chris Smith, an enthusiastic home gardener and marketing manager for Sow True Seeds, a mail-order seed catalog company in Asheville, North Carolina, plans to grow more flowers in his vegetable garden this year. Flowers attract pollinators, which increase yields, Smith says. Planting flowers among vegetables also "looks great, and it breaks up the monoculture of a single bed," he says.

Smith plans to grow a border of sunflowers along one side of his backyard vegetable garden. He's also going to plant nasturtiums in with his squash, and he's making room for lots of marigolds, among other annual flowers.

Smith also vows that in 2018 he'll work harder to make the most of vegetables that can be harvested several ways. Instead of composting the tops of beets and carrots, he's planning to eat the greens. "I'm trying to tackle the problems of food waste and small-space gardening" by making the best use of everything he grows, he says. Turnip greens and radish tops are likewise edible. The leaves of some beans, sweet potatoes and peas are also delicious. Smith really appreciates okra (he once grew 14 different kinds) and delights in recipes for the unexpected, such as okra pizza. He also eats the leaves.

Gardening resolutions are meant to be inspiring, not onerous, these professionals say. If your busy life gets in the way of your good intentions, just do the best you can. "If you don't achieve your resolution, don't beat yourself up," Beaty says. "If it's a good one, you can recycle it. There's always next year."

If you really want to relax, take a yoga mat outside. Practicing yoga in a garden, far from the busy world and close to nature, is like going on a retreat in your own backyard.

Almost 40 million people practice yoga in the United States, and 80 million more intend to get started, according to the 2016 Yoga in America study, an annual report for the Yoga Journal and Yoga Alliance. Most people practice in groups at fitness studios, but interest in yoga at home and outdoors is growing. Public parks and botanic gardens are engaging yoga instructors to teach outdoors in the gardening season, and garden designers are finding that their clients want places set aside in their own yards to practice yoga.

"A lot of our clients are interested in yoga, and we have created platforms and decks where they can practice outside," says Sabrena Schweyer, a landscape designer in Akron, Ohio, who practices yoga on her own front porch. Sometimes clients make room for a yoga mat on an existing patio or deck, she says, or simply choose a level, grassy spot in a sheltered corner of the garden, and make it their yoga sanctuary.

Richard Rosiello, a landscape designer in New Milford, Connecticut, worked with a client on an outdoor dining pavilion that has turned into a multipurpose room -- part yoga studio, part family retreat -- at the heart of the garden. The pavilion is "close to the house, but far enough away," Rosiello says. "It's surrounded by color and movement, but there is a sense of quietness and an energy about it. It's nurturing."

Rosiello's client, Hillary Lane, practices yoga outdoors from spring through fall. In cool weather, she sometimes wears a wooly knit cap and scarf. "Whenever I can, I practice outside," Lane says. "It clears my head." As she works through her yoga poses, she watches the birds and butterflies at the planter boxes around the pavilion, listens to the wind in the trees, and enjoys the views across the garden. "These are the kinds of distractions you want," Lane says. "The birds, the wind, the air -- it just feels so different from practicing inside."

A standard yoga mat is about 2 feet wide and 6 feet long, and a place to practice yoga only needs to be a little larger than that. A platform or patio eight feet wide and 10 to 12 feet long is generous and comfortable, Schweyer says, and can accommodate two people practicing yoga together. It can also be a deck, a dining area or a quiet garden destination. She suggests placing a yoga platform on the east side of the house, where you can greet the morning sun with traditional yoga sun salutations.

To find the right spot, walk around your garden and look for a place of sheltered tranquility, Schweyer suggests. The place you choose should be accessible, perhaps by a winding, meditative path, and shielded by trees or shrubs. "It needs to have some enclosure on three sides, to be a kind of cocoon," she says. Schweyer also suggests placing a step or paving stones at the entrance to a yoga garden, as a physical and psychological signal that you're about to enter a special place.

If you're looking for inspiration, you might try practicing yoga in a public park or botanic garden, where you can experience different settings and surfaces and start to think about adapting those you like to your own backyard. Public gardens from coast to coast are collaborating with local yogis and yoga studios to offer classes, sometimes year-round (held indoors, of course, in inclement weather).

Last year, the U.S. Botanic Garden offered free yoga classes in the garden on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The Denver Botanic Garden, Lewis Ginter Botanic Garden in Richmond, Virginia, and other botanic gardens in Iowa, Illinois, New York, California, Texas -- the list goes on -- all held outdoor yoga classes.

"Yoga is a perfect complement to our gardens, especially since the No. 1 reason many visitors come to the Arboretum is to relax," says Wendy Composto, a staff member at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum in Chaska, Minnesota, near Minneapolis. The outdoor yoga program started five years ago and has been a roaring success: Five yoga studios offer classes at the arboretum. One class last summer had 99 participants practicing their yoga poses together in the rose garden.

"Yoga is a time to reflect and take some time for yourself," Composto says, "and a garden is a great place to do that." Both gardens and yoga classes are good places to meet friends, she says. The connections -- among peace, reflection, the beauty of nature, and people -- are powerful. Outdoor yoga brings them all gracefully together.

SOURCES

-- To find outdoor yoga classes in your area, try an internet search using the words "yoga" and "garden." Or call your local botanic garden or parks and recreation department to ask about the possibilities. To learn more about the yoga programs at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, visit arboretum.umn.edu.

-- Sabrena Schweyer is a member of the Association of Professional Landscape Designers (APLD) and an owner of Salsbury-Schweyer Inc., a landscape design firm in Akron, Ohio. The business specializes in sustainable landscapes and designs that capture the spirit of place in every garden. For more information, visit salsbury-schweyer.com.

-- Richard Rosiello is a landscape designer, APLD member and owner of Rosiello Designs LLC, in New Milford, Connecticut. His garden designs combine his professional landscape training and experience with his background in art. Rosiello teaches design classes at New York Botanic Garden. For more information, email rosiellodesigns@gmail.com.

-- If you're not accustomed to doing yoga by yourself, online classes (video and audio format) will guide you through a yoga practice. Try doyogawithme.com, which has many free classes; bemoreyogic.com also offers free classes. Take your MP3 player, laptop or smartphone into the garden and get started.