The old adage with native plants is:
The first year they sleep. (You don’t see much progress. Maybe they germinate and get a few leaves or even a flower.)
The second year they creep. (Some plants might spread a little, or get bigger than their first year.)
The third year they leap! (The spread a lot, start taking over empty spaces – in a good way – and generally begin to really thrive and have energy to put into flowering.)
I’m in year two, so I’m finally enjoying some blooms this summer! It’s great! This photo is of a heliopsis plant that was given to me by a friend. It was pretty mature already when I planted it, but the roots needed a lot of establishment in their new home. It’s doing great this year, and the flowers seem to last all summer, which is lovely. Behind me you can see a new area we are solarizing. That means putting plastic on the ground to kill the grass so we can make a new flower bed or growing area. I don’t love plastic, and don’t want to create more demand for it, so we just keep using the same piece. Once the grass is dead, we will move it to a new spot and plant native plant starts in the solarized spot. Of course it doesn’t look like much at first. If I use seeds or little seedlings, you can’t even see them from the road the first year. But I have patience.