Native plant gardeners, landscape designers, and land stewards often face a tension between ecological function and traditional horticultural aesthetics. In the Wild Ones National Webinar Rethinking Horticulture with Real Ecology, field botanist and science communicator Joey Santore, creator of Crime Pays But Botany Doesn’t, examines how inherited design norms like straight lines, uniform spacing, tidy edges, and color-grouped plantings shape expectations for native landscapes. These conventions, rooted in European garden traditions and reinforced by modern lawn culture, continue to influence how native plant gardens are judged, managed, and defended, often at the expense of biodiversity, soil health, and long-term ecological resilience.