Running a nursery business with environmental ethics in mind takes more time & costs more money - but it's worth it! Thank you for supporting businesses that value the triple bottom line: social, environmental, and financial.
Restoration & Education
We partner with a 501c3 non-profit education center in Dexter, OR called Lost Valley Education and Event Center (www.lostvalley.org). Tours, classes, and volunteer opportunities are offered through Lost Valley, as well as planting native edible plants into their nature sanctuary on an annual basis.
Organics
We are committed to growing organically as much as possible. While we can’t always control practices of nurseries that we source some of our plants from, we use organic amendments, soils, and plant treatments in our nursery. The only exceptions are the occasional use of rooting hormone and anti-fungal treatments for very ill plants. In addition, we go beyond organic standards by using soil building techniques like mycorrhizal inoculants.
Compostable Packing Materials
We’ve gone to extensive measures to pack the most environmentally-friendly plant package in the nursery business. All packing materials are compostable and recyclable!* No more dealing with disposing of cheap plastic pots, cellophane or plastic tapes, packing peanuts, or plastic bags that other nurseries use. (Hey, if you’re really a lazy gardener, you could just plant and water the whole box!)
*We are sad to say we just discontinued our 1 gallon eco-pots for our 1 gallon plants. We can't find a suitable size eco-pot for this plant size at this time. Please reuse the plastic pot.
Cow Manure EcoPots
We love reducing our contributions to the world-wide plastic problem. There are miles-wide places in the Pacific Ocean where the only thing to be found is plastic. Some of that plastic comes from brittle shreds of disposable plastic pots that are built to degrade within one season (or even before). We don’t want to saddle you with that trash, so when we ship plants we use pots made of cow manure that you can plant directly in the ground! Once in the ground, these pots break down rapidly and offer free fertilizer to your plant. Saving the Earth, one less plastic pot at a time!
*We are sad to say we just discontinued our 1 gallon eco-pots for our 1 gallon plants. We can't find a suitable size eco-pot for this plant size at this time. Please reuse the plastic pot.
Protecting the Wild
Our native plants are propagated and collected on-site or in regional nurseries. Seeds or propagation materials are sometimes sourced from wild stands in ways that don’t harm the stand or the ecology.
Potting Soil
Our main potting soil is made from almost entirely locally-sourced ingredients like Douglas Fir bark, pumice stone, and compost. Most importantly, it's peat-free! (Peat moss is a standard soil ingredient and is mined unsustainably from fragile northern ecosystems). In our seeding mix, we have shifted away from Peat, as well, using coconut coir instead.
Powered by BioDiesel
Our two nursery vehicles are both run on 99% biodiesel (B99).
Native Plant Selection
Native plants, by virtue of their ecological services, resilience, and lower-input needs, are the most environmentally friendly plants that any nursery could grow!
