Living Yard

Software & tools for the native-plant movement

A yard can be an ecosystem.

Living Yard builds the tools that make a living yard the easy choice — a coach for the homeowner learning to plant, a toolkit for the pros who do this for a living, and the map that connects them. We build it from inside the work.

0 native plants in the shared catalog
0 species mapped in the food web
0 ecological relationships traced
0+ nurseries in the directory
01 — The Why

Removing every hurdle between
a lawn and an ecosystem.

A yard of native plants beats a lawn on almost every count — for the birds, the soil, the water, even the maintenance bill. So why does nearly every yard still look the same? Because a century of infrastructure made lawns easy — a garden center on every corner, a crew for every chore, advice everywhere you look. Natives never got that. Living Yard is building the missing infrastructure — the know-how, the discovery, the professional tools — until a living yard is the easy choice. Wherever you're standing, here's your way in.

02 — Where You Fit

Find your way in.

Three ways people come to native plants. Start wherever you are.

  1. For the gardener

    I have a yard.

    You want to plant — you just need to know what, and where to get it.

  2. For the pro

    I work in this field.

    Designer, grower, landscaper, steward — you need tools built for the work.

    • Living Yard Pro The software toolkit for native-plant professionals.
    • Events & communitysoon In-person gatherings for the people doing the work.
  3. For the homeowner

    Just do it for me.

    You want the yard, not the homework. Have it designed, planted, and tended.

03 — Behind the Software

We don't just build for
this field. We work in it.

Most software for this industry comes from people who've never planted a thing. We're the opposite. Living Yard Natives is our own working nursery and landscape practice in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago — and every install, every stubborn clay-soil bed, every season's losses and comebacks teaches us what the software has to get right.

That practice isn't a side project — it's serious work, held to the same standard as the software, and we ship nothing we haven't proven in our own beds first. It's also why we're glad to put the same tools in the hands of the pros we share a market with: a rising movement beats a bigger slice of a small one.

See the practice — Living Yard Natives
04 — How It Fits

One living system.

Each product feeds the next — the way an ecosystem feeds itself.

  1. 1

    Grow

    Pros grow and design with Living Yard Pro.

  2. 2

    Find

    Homeowners discover growers on Native Plant Nursery Near Me.

  3. 3

    Plant

    Gardens go in the ground through nurseries like Living Yard Natives.

  4. 4

    Tend

    Living Yard Coach coaches the garden and tracks what comes back.

  5. 5

    Return

    Every yard adds habitat — and demand for the next grower. The loop continues.

Built in partnership · keystoneai.io

The studio behind the software.

The Living Yard apps are designed and built with Keystone AI, a studio that works with sustainability consultancies, ecological businesses, and other mission-driven organizations. The name comes from the same place ours does — the keystone species that hold ecosystems together.

If software like this would help your work, that’s a good place to start.

Visit Keystone AI