ABOUT IMAGINE NATIVE PLANT FARM

The goal of IMAGINE Native Plant Farm is to meet the growing demand for native plant materials for public and private lands and community spaces in the Greater Capital Region, NY. Partnering with the Mid-Atlantic Regional Seed Bank (MARSB.org) and located at The Bioreserve, a nonprofit organization with farmland located in Glenmont, NY, Home Earth Alliance is working to realize the dream for a large scale nursery focused exclusively on propagating straight native plants to serve the ecoregions that comprise the greater Capital Region. Home Earth Alliance is a nonprofit working to support biodiversity, mitigate climate change, and promote environmental justice. Getting the right plants in the right place is a significant part of that puzzle.

Good, Better, Best: Where Your Native Plants Come from Matters!

Not all native plants are equal. There are some questions to consider when buying native plants. To start with, is that plant actually native to the ecoregion where you live? If so, where did the seeds for that plant originate? Were they wild collected from the ecoregion where that plant will be replanted (a “straight native”) or was that seed genetically manipulated (a “nativar”) bred commercially for bloom size, resilience, or ease of growth, but perhaps less valuable to pollinators and insects? Was the plant produced from clippings, a form of plant cloning that eventually dilutes natural genetic diversity?

Research is clear: nativars do not, in most cases, have the same value to pollinators as straight natives. And when we plant nativars, or even straight native plants from outside our region, and they cross-pollinate with native populations here, they may degrade the genetic adaptability and resilience of the native plant populations here. Aster, goldenrod, and milkweed from Maine, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and even western NY are not the same as aster, goldenrod, and milkweed from local populations.

As we like to say, there are good, better, and best options. IMAGINE Native Plant Farm is working to provide you with the very best options whenever possible - straight natives, from and for our ecoregion - so you can be sure your efforts at ecological restoration are . . . well . . . the best! Beware of “green washing.” If it is commercially mass produced, it is likely not a straight native.

Cofounders, Pam Skripak and Kate Brittenham. Photo courtesy of Pacilli Photography