How to Grow a Native Plant Community

By Karen Kahle, CGC Executive Director

Around the CGC, we often talk with people about where they are on their journey with native plants—ranging from native plant skeptic to enthusiast to true advocate to natives-only zealot. Most of the people we’re talking with probably don’t realize that the CGC has had its own journey with native plants that mirrors those of many of our constituents.

In 2017, during my first summer at the CGC, we were looking to hire a new horticulturist. Since the horticulturist at the CGC is also expected to teach classes, we asked the two finalists for the position to make a presentation of learning on a horticulture-related topic of their choosing. When both chose native plants, we could see the writing on the wall.

The horticulturist we hired, Greg Torres, was a true native plant advocate (bordering on zealot), and he took us on a deep dive into native plants that changed who we are and what we do in a significant way. There is no easy pathway towards a sustainable practice of native plant adoption, but we soon recognized that if there were more opportunities for native plant education and public engagement and if more of the plants were available to meet the growing demand, then it could be possible to begin building a skilled and impassioned community whose members appreciate and use native plants.

Soon we began offering classes about native plants for pollinators and birds and native plant alternatives to invasive plants in your garden. We began taking people out for “walk and talks” in local forests, and we started to incorporate more natives into the landscape around our home here at Hauck Botanic Garden.

Then, in the summer of 2021, Indigenous Landscapes decided to close their nursery, and we had the amazing good fortune to receive a donation of most of their remaining native plants. That September, we used those plants for our first-ever Native Plant Sale and invested the proceeds in ReRooted, our own native plant propagation program.

In 2022, we held an online-only sale of the thousand or so plants we had propagated—many of which had been grown on the driveway of our horticulturist at the time, Brian Grubb. We expanded the number of native plant classes we offered and continued to add more native plants and trees to our plant collection.

In 2023, with generous funding from the Landen Foundation, we purchased a 20-by-45-foot hoop house, allowing us to significantly ramp up our native plant propagation. That fall, we held our first-ever Fall Native Plant Festival, inviting ten local native plant growers and nurseries to join us in a day-long sale and celebration of native plants.

Last year, more than a thousand people and eleven local growers and nurseries participated in the second Fall Native Plant Festival. And this year, on Saturday, September 6, we are expecting even more vendors and shoppers to be part of the festival fun. Something that started small really has grown into something amazing.

In looking back on this journey, I see how the challenge of connecting people and native plants is a place-based, integrative process that we were wise to approach as ecologists—just as plants do not exist in a vacuum, without community interactions, an appreciation of native plants requires practitioners who support each other and share in the process of learning about the local ecological systems.

By combining education, community engagement and practical action, we’ve seen how the CGC can inspire more people to become passionate advocates for native plants and their vital role in creating healthy and vibrant ecosystems. We’ve seen how this will lead to more truly native plants in local nurseries, parks, school grounds and gardens supported by a community of people sharing learning, practice and native plants.

After all, sometimes just the sight of a yard dancing with butterflies is enough to sell the native plant concept all by itself!