Earth Kind Plant Selector:

In Texas there are hundreds of plants to choose from for use in home and commercial landscapes. Trying to find just the right plant for a specific location can be challenging. Ensuring that your selection is also well adapted to the environment makes this decision even harder.

The Earth Kind Plant Selector can be an extremely useful tool for this difficult task. This searchable database provides users with the opportunity to select plant materials based on factors such as height, width, flower color, sun or shade, bloom period, leaf character, as well as several other matching criteria.

Each plant in the database is also rated for heat tolerance, drought tolerance, pest tolerance, soil requirement and fertility requirement. The Earth Kind Index value (which ranges from 1 - 10) is a measurement based on all 5 of these resource efficiency categories. The higher the number, the more resource efficient a plant is. Plants with an EK Index value of 8 or higher are considered to be extremely resource efficient and are generally heat tolerant, drought tolerant, pest tolerant, with minimal soil or fertility requirements for the selected area (based on ZIP code).

Go to the Earth Kind Plant Selector.

Please Note:

The Earth Kind Plant Selector is NOT a list of recommended plants. In fact, many of the plants returned from a data inquiry will NOT be well adapted to your area (i.e. these plants will have a low EK Index value). The objective of this on-line tool is to provide educational information on a wide range of plant materials to assist in making selections for the landscape.

About Invasiveness…

The Earth Kind Plant Selector rates plants STRICTLY on the basis of resource efficiency (drought tolerance, heat tolerance, pest tolerance, soil requirement, fertility requirement). It DOES NOT provide information concerning the potential invasiveness of landscape plant materials. It is likely that plants with a high EK Index value will be more "aggressive" in their growth habit than plants with a lower value.

None of the plants included in the EK Plant Selector database currently appear on the State of Texas list of invasive plants, regulated by the Texas Department of Agriculture.

For additional information on plant invasiveness we invite you to visit the TexasInvasives.org web site. TEXASINVASIVES.ORG maintains an online database devoted to plants known to occur in or around Texas that are suspected of causing invasive problems. The purpose of this site is informational and educational and it is not intended to be a regulatory tool. Many of the species on this list are economically important horticultural plants but sometimes cause problems when they escape and establish in natural areas.