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This is part of a series with Perfect Earth Project, a nonprofit dedicated to toxic-free, ecological gardening, on how you can be more sustainable in your landscapes at home.
Time for a bit of good news. More people are growing native plants. According to the National Gardening Association, the number of people buying them has nearly doubled since 2019. And while it can still be challenging to find native plants at garden centers around the country, small, hyper-local native plant nurseries are popping up to meet demand.
Below, we highlight six such nurseries (including three that opened just last year)—Earth Tones in Woodbury, CT; Flosagri in Cold Spring, NY; All Tomorrow’s Prairie in Tulsa, OK; Dropseed in Prince Edward County in Ontario; Redbud Native Plant Nursery in Media, PA; and Long Island Native Plant Initiative in Brentwood, NY—and asked them what lessons they’ve learned growing native plants.
Earth Tones Native Plant Nursery, Woodbury, CT
When landscape architect Lisa Turoczi was starting out as a designer, she had to travel hours to wholesale nurseries to buy plants for projects. At one nursery she had an epiphany: “I was standing among all these flowers and there was no sound, no buzzing, no birds,” she recalled. The eerie silence was a sign that they were spraying pesticides to keep insects away from the plants. No insects, no birds. That experience provided an impetus to start Earth Tones Native Plants in Woodbury, CT, with her husband Kyle, a wetlands ecologist, in 2004. What began as a small native plant nursery with 20 different species has grown today to offer 400 different species—all geared to their region in the Northeast. They grow everything from seed, including trees and shrubs, and are also propagating ferns by spore to allow for greater genetic diversity. “Plants grown from seed grow faster and are hardier and stronger,” says Turoczi. “They’re basically grown the way nature intended them, rather than forcing a plant to make roots out of its stem.” As for sound? There’s no eerie silence at Earth Tones. You can hear nature’s full chorus.
Redbud Nursery, Media, PA
“We are landscape architects who really love plants,” says Julie Snell, who, together with Lisa McDonald Hanes, founded the landscape architecture firm Tend in Media, PA, in 2013. They hadn’t set out to buy a nursery, but when Redbud Native Plant Nursery owner Catherine Smith was ready to retire five years ago, they jumped at the opportunity to take up the mantle and reconnect with the plants they love while still keeping their landscape architecture business. “When you’re working as a landscape architect, you can spend a lot of time at the computer,” says Snell. Having a nursery brings the duo back into the garden. They offer design and coaching services at Redbud, host workshops, and have display gardens so people can see, smell, and touch the plants. “We’re educators at heart,” Snell says. “We’re building community through horticulture.”
Long Island Native Plant Initiative, Brentwood, NY
“All of our plants originated on Long Island,” says Maggie Muzante, lead nursery manager at Long Island Native Plant Initiative (LINPI). The nonprofit grows more than 40 different ecotypic species, ethically collected from seed found in Nassau and Suffolk Counties. Its mission is to preserve the area’s biodiversity and to restore habitat. “We grow multiple sessions of the same species from multiple locations in the plot to boost genetic hardiness,” Muzante says. In addition to selling resilient, nursery-grown plants, they also add to the native seed bank and work mostly with a mighty group of passionate volunteers.
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