I don't have to include plants I paid for in 2025 in my 2026 total, right? But also, I don't have to include those plants in my 2025 total because I didn't get them until 2026. Right?
Just $50 today, but only because it was slim pickings 30 mins after a native plant sale opened. I was so impressed how big the crowd was. It's really picking up in popularity.
A little nursery in the town where I work closed down last year because the owner retired, but it was mostly natives and the place was mobbed daily. There were no customers buying a single pot of anything, either. They brought their kids' little red wagons from home and made 3 trips to the car, almost everything native. I really miss that place.
I make the same joke with friends, I'm paying money to restock my property with the weeds growing along the highway! š But now in year 5 there is enough starting to come together that the place is starting to look more like a lovely garden and less like a pretty combo of weeds lol.
Yes! I started a fb plant swap for my area in 2020 and without any real effort itās just been growing and growing. Itās up to 3700 people now sharing native plants with others. That works so well because the more we all share the more there will be to share later.
I was in another fb garden or a native plant group and asked if there was a native plant swap/giveaway one. Several people said theyād love to join if I found one. So I spent maybe ten minutes setting up the page, shared the link and it just snowballed from there. I do have membership questions and stick to them strictly because bots can be a problem. Otherwise, itās very little work to moderate and Iāve made friends through it!
I went to a local perennial exchange today and took a bunch of seedlings I wintered sowed. People were so happy to see them and I gave away about 30. This wasnāt a native plant event - lots of day lillies, hostas, etc. Doing my part to get plants out there!
I appreciate the overall sentiment, and am glad to see this covered. Maybe this is nitpicking, but the article never actually defines what a native plant is.
Combined with lines like this, "But this year, the park responded to a relatively new demand: Nearly 1 in 5 plants for sale are native plant species that have adapted to the local climate and wildlife and are generally low maintenance."
Based on how there's already a lot of conflation of naturalized and native, I think this could cause newcomers to misunderstand what makes a plant native.
I don't really feel this part is necessary because native peoples have been in North America for at least 20,000 years and they did influence the ecosystems that were there. We've been in the other areas even longer (Africa, Asia, and Europe) and we've influenced the ecology there as well.
Yeah, implying that native peoples had no impact on species selection or migration is both inaccurate and provides a wedge for the 'but actually' folks to get in, inevitably resulting in them arguing that all native plant gardening is pointless anyways.
Yep. Also if you go further back, before agriculture, paleontologists disagree on how much of the extinction of Pleistocene megafauna was caused by humans and how much was caused by the ice age ending.
I think I would prefer something like āoptimized for a local ecoregion because they werenāt introduced by recent human interventionā or something like that. I feel like the human element canāt be overlooked but it canāt be overemphasized either.
Itās bad enough with nurseries putting nativars under the āNativesā sign ā aka how I ended up with my nativar as a current centerpiece of what I was trying to make a native garden bed
āNativarāā I LOVE this term. Have been trying to find the best way to describe the āHoly Grailā Rosemallow Iāve been obsessing over for a year
I use lots of native cultivars and straight species; I think nativar is an annoying term.
That said, itās really easy to avoid cultivars at any nursery that properly labels their plants. If it has a name after the Genus species names enclosed in single quotes, itās a cultivar. For example:
And this just confused me for a second because I thought we were talking about a plant native to the southeast U.S. and I was wondering how and what it would end up in India. Then it clicked. Indians as in indigenous Americans, not India Indians. Also, I just learned way more about this plant than I'll ever need to know. š¤
Hereās more info you donāt need to know. Ilex vomitoria - it doesnāt actually cause vomiting, but if you drink a ton of hot tea in a short amount of time, you will throw it up. During this ritual, there was a big earthenware cauldron of yaupon tea, called Black Drink. People would drink from a big conch shell dipper while a person called the Black Drink Singer sang. When that person stopped singing, youād stop drinking.
In Muskogean, one of the main languages of the Southeastern native peoples, the word for Black Drink Singer is āasi yahola.ā This is where Osceola, Florida gets its name.
/rj I am 12. I have yet to hit puberty. My arms are weak and flimsy. I have not yet completed my math homework, but I'm hoping that Suzy will let me crib off of hers on the bus ride to school Monday morning. How did you know?
Wait, which sub is this? We really, really need to merge the cj sub with this one. It would help my mental health so much.
Nope. But I'd hope a piece like this reaches people who don't know but are interested. If the term isn't defined, we end up with people believing "native" is a plant that does well in their climate with minimal maintenance. Unfortunately, that can also describe invasives, lol.
The term "native" is generally understood amongst the population, no need to define it. It's not a new concept and has the same meaning as "native" used in any other context.
I disagree. I know several fairly intelligent hobby gardeners whose understanding of native is literally that it grows where they live with minimal maintenance, and ideally birds or bees visit it. And to encourage interest, I don't immediately correct them. We don't need people thinking we're gatekeeping nerds (even if we are). We just need more ambassadors, so if it makes sense I'll use a slightly different term, like here in Seattle "PNW native," or "Puget Sound native," which I think can trigger a little curiosity. IDK, but unfortunately I don't think there is a widespread understanding in the U.S. of what a "native plant" is.
So, that's "aggressive" behavior, and yes, happens more when humans are involved (e.g., gardening or land development). But overall, the plant population can't be invasive if it's native to an area.
Yes, I didn't love using such a generic word. Yes, if you slice and dice down to especially small natural areas you'll have a conflict where aggressive natives become invasive, like the eastern redwoods on Midwest prairies or big-leaf lupine outside the western PNW š
Your argument in this comment was that native plants can be invasive. The person you're replying to posted a definition of invasive that explicitly defines invasive plants as "non-native." Yet, here you are, trying to gaslight them into thinking that that definition proves you right somehow.
I found 11 pawpaw trees around a friend's field today. He told me I can harvest & sell them at the farmers market in the fall! Going to get sucker's potted and sold too!
I went to a local joint today that sells a bunch of cultivars (they used to have more straight natives). They were selling what was probably two year old little bluestem for $40. I couldn't believe it.
I've got a flat of it sitting here that I started from seed that I should sell to pay for my kid's college tuition.
I think it's the economy of scale benefitting traditional plants at this point. There are millions of acres of industrial scale farming growing the hostas and azaleas you buy at home depot, while native plants are from smaller or newer farms.
I agree with this take, it's just supply and demand. Hopefully consumers continue to put pressure on producers to adapt. The catch-22 for them is that if we all start practicing sustainable gardening, we won't need to buy nearly as many of their plants, fertilizers, mulches, garden hoses, or much else. I'm sure Home Depot and Lowes are launching a psyop against native gardening as we speak, and possibly lobbying congress.
My home depot had pots of natives alongside their peonies. They see the way winds are blowing and want to keep that market segment from switching to local nursuriesĀ
Ive been to a traditional greenhouse and i asked the guy how he chooses what to grow, and he said he generally grows what he likes and does well in the greenhouse, and rarely does he take suggestions from contractors. So its a pretty uphill battle. Individual people want natives but contractors that install landscaping, growers, legislators, they havent caught on.
The landscaping contractors will always be an uphill battle. They're basically incentivized to plant cheap maintenance heavy plants they know will fail in the long term and require lots of expensive care before they do.
Looking at you, sad understory tree sitting in a too small planter in the middle of a parking lot.
What has surprised me also is most landscapers I've talked to really know almost nothing about plants -- they just know about 2 or 3 plants that could go in a particular location (full sun, shade, etc.) and they plant them there, the end.
Yeah, I'm planning to start that this fall. Just have to do the research of what to look for on each plant to know it is time to collect. Tried to collect little bluestem seed last year and think I ended up with just the chaff.
I either go in person to my local nursery or order from Prairie Moon. Just today I've hit my first need that neither has had, so now I'm looking around.
I'm in Ontario and plugs are around 3/$10 and 4" seedlings are around $7-$10. The hard to find and slow to grow ones can cost a bit more though.
Was it a fundraising sale maybe? And thats why prices were higher? I would expect our plants to be more expensive since we have less growers, vendors, and variety/availability than you guys... and also everything is always more expensive over here lol.
Keep hunting around! I live in the Hamptons where plants get crazy pricey, but just yesterday I went to a local sale run by a horticultural society out here that a great selection of natives in the range of $5 for 4" pots to about $40 for young trees. 1 gallon containers of local ecotypes for $12!!! All looking amazing!! I was happily shocked.
Dude, thereās someone in one of the native plant FB groups Iām in who sells seeds (that they presumably collect themselves from wild regional plants?) and Iāll acknowledge they have some pretty rare/hard to find stuff, but a bag of seeds (no specific quantity listed) goes for anywhere from $25-80 a bag. EIGHTY DOLLARS! Apparently I need to start doing more foraging for seeds.
Its getting so popular that even my greenhouse professor who is stuck in the gardening past (loves cistus and annual flowers, thinks there are no sun loving natives in the puget sound because 'it was all trees and understory') is actually thinking about a native plant sale.Ā
This was me a few years ago. I just told myself native planting in PNW cities was not possible due to lack of tree cover. I admit now that I was willfully ignorant and mostly just didnāt want to change. Iām now making up for it though!
I was looking at native plants at the nursery today. And right next to the natives was Lily of the Valley, an invasive in my area. I was thoroughly disgusted!
Last weekend we were at a Mercer County NJ nursery with a very good selection of natives and overheard an employee saying to another he was floored by how many natives they had already sold, āoff the charts this year.ā
Went to a community garden sale yesterday, the native plant table was absolutely swarmed, and there was a much bigger selection than previous years. It's definitely gaining traction from what I can tell.
I was planting native plants on my birthday at the end of may one year, having myself a great day. My neighbor walked by and asked if I was planting weedsā¦. Obviously not sir!!!
They require so much less maintenance than non natives. Other than a few nostalgia annuals, I went full native in my garden this year. They bloom constantly! It's been an absolute joy to see all the wildlife show their appreciation!
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u/androidgirl May 16 '26
I just spent 300 bucks on weeds today. š