Benjamin's garden writing has received a silver award from the Garden Writers Association; his work has appeared in Northern Gardener, Fix, APLD's The Designer, Nebraska Life, The American Gardener, Fine Gardening, Garden Design, Horticulture Magazine, the Lincoln Journal Star, and the Omaha World Herald. Benjamin has contributed to several books and has been interviewed on dozens of podcasts and radio programs. From 2012 to 2017 Benjamin wrote an award-winning column at Houzz which received over 3 million reads with some 200 articles -- below is a selection.

Nature is not a garden, but it’s too easy to see nature as something imperfect. When we can take a step back and see a fallen tree as beautiful and purposeful or appreciate an assassin bug enjoying its moth dinner, we can see that the world doesn’t seem to need us in it, and we can start to become a more humble and rewarding part of it. A garden can teach us how to interact with life and guide us into deeper self-discovery if we design with purpose, then let that design evolve with the species that come to call it home." Read more. 

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Planning a
Native Plant
Garden

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• 3 Ways Native Plants Make Gardening So Much Better
• Native Plants 101
• What to Know About Starting Your Garden
• How to Find the Right Plants
• Keep Your Garden Looking Good Year Round
• Bringing Natives Into an Established Landscape
• Designing an HOA-Approved Pollinator Garden
• Using Natives in Formal and Wild Designs

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Sustainable and
Low Maintenance
Design

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• Meet a Lawn Alternative That Works Wonders
• Stop Fighting the Patchy Lawn
• Using Drifts & Masses
• Stop Worrying and Start Loving Clay Soil
• Risks to Take for True Garden Rewards
• Get Year-Round Good Looks With Matrix Gardening
• Designing a Shady Meadow Garden
• Wildflowers That Heal the Soil
• Why Your Garden Might Be Full of Weeds
• Solve 3 Common Problems With More Plants
• Ideas for an Earth-Friendly Garden
• Gardening for Kids
• Design a Garden by Looking at its Roots
• Create a Meadow Garden Your Neighbors Will Love
• What Prairies Teach Us About Garden Design
• Ten Native Flowers With Unique Foliage
• Bringing Shrubs Into the Flower Garden
• Top 10 Grasses For the Central Plains
• Be Your Own Wildflower Nursery
• 7 Eco-Friendly Gardening Ideas That Save Time
• Perennials as Privacy Screens
• 10 Flowers For the Winter Garden
• Gardening For a Healthy Family
  

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Native Plants
for
Tough Spots

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• Robust Groundcovers for the Central Plains
• Nine Clay-Busting Wildflowers
• Plants to Seed and Forget
  
• Cool Season Grasses for Shade and Sun
• Try These Adaptable, Shade-Tolerant Native Sedges
• Ten Spring Wildflowers for the Central Plains
• Native Flowers to Brighten Shady Spots
• Unsung Perennials That Thrive in Dry Shade
• Five Native Early-Spring Bloomers
• A Overlooked Asters For Wet or Dry Soils
  

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"Our gardens matter, and the way in which we create them, grow them, and rethink them matters on a level far more important than whether they simply function aesthetically. While we must always find a garden beautiful, and while it will always be a kind of artifice, the truth is the entire world is now a garden we have made. How we tend it, how we honor those species we've ignored and betrayed, will say much about who we are and who we will become.

Our legacy won't be how pretty our gardens looked; our legacy will be how gardens and other managed spaces woke us to a revolution of belonging in this world, and a renaissance of ethical thinking that helped us evolve into our fullest potential as stewards of life and as gardeners of our own hearts."

Read more from Our Century's Garden Legacy

Gardening
For
Wildlife

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• Plants That Beat Butterfly Bush for the Wildlife Draw
• Designing a Wildlife-Friendly Small Garden
• 15 Flowers That Attract Butterflies
• Help the Monarch Migration With These Natives
• What to Plant in Fall to Help Spring Pollinators
• How To Design a Pollinator Garden for Fall
• What You Can Do to Celebrate Pollinator Week
• Tips for Designing a Wildlife Refuge
• A Few Easy Ways You Can Garden for Nature
• You Don't Need Prairie to Help Pollinators
• 15 Native Flowers That Feed Native Bees
  
• Oh Deer! Ten Flowers That Stand Up to the Herds
• Shrubs for Year-Round Bird Feeding
• What's in a Name? Six Wildflowers That Aren't "Weeds"
• What Monarchs Taught Me About Garden Design
  
• Goldenrods Are Worth a Second Look
  
• Stunning Butterfly Host Plants
  
• Gardening For Bees and Why It's a Good Thing
  
• Be a Citizen Scientist and Help Wildlife
  

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Rethinking
Traditional
Garden Practices

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• Garden-Friendly Native Alternatives to Overplanted Exotics
• How Gardens Can Go Beyond Aesthetic Beauty
• New Ways to Think About All That Mulch
• The Art of Green Mulch
• Reasons Not to Clean Up Your Fall Garden
• The Case for Losing the Traditional Lawn
• Don't Rely on USDA Hardiness Zones
• Why Aggressive Plants Might Be Your Friends
• Let's Weed Out Four Native Plant Myths
• Busting Even More Native Plant Myths
• Slash Costs With These Design Strategies
• Why Your Native Plants Might Be Struggling
• Stop Chasing the "Perfect" Garden
• For Garden Inspiration Look Just Beyond the Fence
• Native Gardens Outgrow Their Messy Reputation
• Reasons to Celebrate Your Winter Garden
• Rethink Common Practices and Follow Nature's Example
• Don't Rush the Spring Cleanup
• Go Ahead, Break These Design Rules
• Why Fall is the Best Time For Planting
  

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Empowering
Reflections
and Stories

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• Reflections on a Gardening Year
• Three Ideas From the Evolving Garden
• An Ode to Autumn
• The Benefits of Wild Landscape Design
• Invaluable Life Lessons From the Garden
• Celebrate the Browns and Tans of Winter
• Let's Revel in Summer Garden Sweetness
• What We Can Learn From Longwood's Meadow
• Key Elements to a Stunning Fall Garden
• How I Learned to Be an Imperfect Gardener
• Garden for All 5 Sense With These Plants
• The Quotable Garden
  
• Lessons in the Rewards of Selfless Gardening
  

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Non-Houzz Articles:

Gardening for Butterflies (Fix.com)
Gardening for Climate Change (Fix.com)
Gardening for Native Bees (L Magazine)

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Native Plant Profiles

Sedges & Grasses

Plains oval sedge (Carex brevior)
Long-beaked sedge (Carex sprengelii)
Ivory sedge (Carex eburnea)
Indian grass (Sorghastrum nutans)
Big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii)
Prairie dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepis)
Sideoats grama (Bouteloua curtipendula)
Blue grama (Bouteloua gracilis)
Purple love grass (Eragrostis spectabilis)


Trees & Shrubs

Eastern Oaks
Bur oak
Shumard oak
Black oak
Swamp white oak
Shingle oak
Nuttall oak
Southern live oak

Shrubs for Birds
Red twig dogwood
Saskatoon serviceberry
American beautyberry
Arrowwood viburnum
Winterberry
American elderberry
Northern bayberry
Spicebush

Forbs

Round-headed bush clover (Lespedeza capitata)
Sullivant's milkweed (Asclepias sullivantii)
Swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata)
Spider milkweed (Asclepias viridis)
Tall blazingstar (Liatris aspera)
Meadow blazingstar (Liatris ligulistylis)
Scaly blazingstar (Liatris squarrosa)
Joe pye weed spp
Spotted joe pye (Eupatorium maculatum)
Blue mistflower (Conoclinium coelestinum)
Common boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum)
Prairie sunflower (Helianthus petiolaris)
Lead plant (Amorpha canescens)
Dwarf false indigo (Amorpha nana)
Canada milkvetch (Astragalus canadensis)
Dwarf blue indigo (Baptisia australis minor)
Wild senna (Senna hebecarpa)
White turtlehead (Chelone glabra)
Rocky mountain bee plant (Cleome serrulata)
Tall coreopsis (Coreopsis tripteris)
White prairie clover (Dalea candida)
Midland shooting star (Dodecatheon meadia)
Coneflowers spp
Black-eyed susans (Rudbeckia spp.)
Blue vervain (Verbena hastata)
Culver's root (Veronicastrum virginicum)
Golden alexanders (Zizia aurea)
Prairie blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium campestre)
Common ironweed (Vernonia fasciculata)

Rattlesnake master (Eryngium yuccifolium)
Queen of the prairie (Filipendula rubra)
Closed bottle gentian (Gentiana andrewsii)
Prairie smoke (Geum triflorum)
Great blue lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica)
Wild quinine (Parthenium integrifolium)
Shell leaf penstemon (Penstemon grandiflorus)
Pasque flower (Anemone patens)
Virginia mountain mint (Pycnanthemum virginianum)
Upright prairie coneflower (Ratibida columnifera)
Giant coneflower (Rudbeckia maxima)
Blue sage (Salvia azurea)
Stiff goldenrod (Oligoneuron rigidum)
Riddell's Goldenrod (Oligoneuron riddellii)
Tall Boneset (Eupatorium altissimum)
Cream Wild Indigo (Baptisia bracteata)
Prairie Dandelion (Nothocalais cuspidata)
Big leaf aster
White woodland aster
Smooth aster (Symphyotrichum laeve)
Aromatic aster (Symphyotrichum oblongifolium)
Sky blue aster (Symphyotrichum oolentangiense)
Heath aster
Silky aster
Short's aster
Swamp aster
Blue wood aster
Pacific aster
Calico aster