Richard Pais turned his yard into a wildflower meadow and never looked back -- except to admire the blossoms. Come each spring, the 1/4-acre lot beside his Mount Airy home erupts in natural, if unruly, splendor. Thriving stands of coreopsis, poppies BTC and wallflowers burst into color, carpeting the field with a profusion of brilliant, waist-high blooms.
The meadow is the envy of the block. When neighbors start trimming their lawns, Mr. Pais' mower stays in the garage.
"I must save 30 hours of mowing a year," he says.
Sidney Turner toiled for years to produce a typical lawn on her tree-shaded lot in Catonsville. Then she gave up and planted wildflowers. Now lacy wild geraniums and ground-hugging pink foam flowers flourish where grass once struggled to survive.
"I was fighting and fighting against my yard; then I decided to 'listen' to it," Ms. Turner says. "My yard wanted to be a woodland."
Throughout Maryland, homeowners tired of their cookie-cutter lawns and generic plants are turning to an alternate, more natural landscape: wildflowers. Instead of browsing through garden catalogs in February to find marigolds and petunias, they're searching for perennials like gayfeather, false blue indigo and allegheny spurge -- exotic names for simple plants rugged enough to stave off insects, drought and disease.
Sales of wildflower plants are brisk at the Irvine Natural Science Center, which sponsors a symposium on gardening with native perennials each year at St. Timothy's School in Stevenson. "All the plants for sale are gone in about two hours," says Keith Harrison, a naturalist there. "It's incredible how many people want their yards to be representative of what nature might have been."
Membership in the Maryland Native Plant Society has mushroomed: Founded in 1992 to cultivate interest in wildflowers, the organization has grown to 300 members from its original six.
"These are people who love the simple structure of a wild plant," says Barbara Medina, club president. "Native roses may have only five petals, but they're wonderful flowers -- and they smell heavenly."
At a nursery in Gaithersburg, Denise Gibbs can't keep up with the public demand for the thousands of native plants she sells at $4 to $8 apiece. Doctors and architects, homeowners and bird lovers flock to her place each spring for perennials such as swamp milkweed, a favorite of butterflies, and turtlehead, a pond-loving plant with dark shiny leaves and white or pink blossoms that resemble -- you guessed it -- the head of a turtle.
"Everyone is getting the bug," says Ms. Gibbs. "Some people are growing a few wildflowers in a corner, to see how it goes; others are changing their whole yard."
Some of her clients are so enamored of native plants that they no longer have a lawn, says Ms. Gibbs.
"People are, quite literally, going back to their roots," says Charmane Truesdell, a landscape design consultant from Beltsville. "They want plants that can survive without coddling of any kind. They want columbine, goatsbeard and wild ginger.
"These are the ancestors of our modern plants. Some are almost weeny-looking, but they've got great roots."
Moreover, once established, native perennials such as the cardinal flower, butterfly weed and sand phlox tolerate neglect, disdain fertilizers, harbor wildlife and hold their own against everything but progress.
"People are desperate to keep in touch with the natural world because it is disappearing from their personal lives," says Joan Feely, curator of native plants at the National Arboretum in Washington, D.C. "They want to grow what was living on their land before it was bulldozed and built on."
Hence, a rush of interest in plants such as the Maryland golden aster, which produces hundreds of clear yellow flowers simultaneously; joe-pye weed, a gangly 6-footer with tall, straight stems that explode into purple clouds; and jack-in-the-pulpit, with its quaint, hooded flowers each spring and bright red berries in fall.
Jean Worthley's woodsy, rolling 18-acre homestead in Finksburg surrounded by thousands of wildflowers she planted herself. Pink and white trilliums pop up through fallen leaves each spring. Large drifts of orange-flowering jewelweed line the banks of a trickling stream.
There are so many native plants to tend that Mrs. Worthley has little time for housework. "An immaculate home is a sign of a misspent life," she says.
Despite a reputation for toughness, wildflowers do need some care until they become established, a process which normally takes from three to five years. Weeding and watering is critical early on, less so once the plants take off.
Horticulturists suggest buying native plants from reputable dealers. They discourage homeowners from digging up specimens from fields and woodlands: It may be illegal, and the plants seldom survive.
Choose a garden site carefully -- most wildflowers prefer sun, but there are many shade-lovers too.
Above all, say experts, avoid prepackaged wildflower seed mixes. Starting from seed means dealing with another breed of native plant -- weeds. As the wildflowers grow, they'll be joined by weeds. Count on it.
If you want to go native . . .
A selection of nursery sources of native plants in Maryland (courtesy, National Arboretum in Washington, D.C.):
Atlantic Star Nursery, 620 Pyle Road, Forest Hill, Md. 21050, (410) 838-7950.
Kurt Bluemel Inc., 2740 Greene Lane, Baldwin, Md. 21013, (410) 557-7229.
Environmental Concern Inc., P.O. Box P, St. Michaels, Md. 21663, (301) 745-9620.
Lower Marlboro Nursery, P.O. Box 1013, Dunkirk, Md. 20754, (301) 855-7654.
Wildflower, 2292 Dunster Lane, Rockville, Md. 20854, (301) 762-7750.