Establishing the PNW Native Plant Network to Unite the Native Plant Industry and Improve Sustainable Production for Restoration and Urban Landscapes

Commodities

• Additional Plants: native plants

Practices

• Education and Training: networking
• Natural Resources/Environment: biodiversity
• Sustainable Communities: community development

The Pacific Northwest (PNW) faces growing demand for an emerging crop - native plants and seed. Native plants are critical for ecological restoration and sustainable landscaping. Land managers, restoration practitioners, ecologists, landscapers, architects, and private consumers ("end users") are seeking native plants and seeds to improve climate resiliency and reduce long-term maintenance needs. While the quantity and diversity of native species in production has grown over the past decade, growers still lack region-specific production protocols for most native plant taxa (including ones with high demand), a means for communicating and networking, and marketing tools that broaden visibility to current and potential end users.

Due to these limitations, end users seeking native plant materials are often frustrated by a lack of availability and/or the need to work through multiple vendors to find the species and quantities needed. Although there is strong interest in native plant materials development, new growers often struggle to persist beyond a few years in an economically-challenging environment, resulting in high turnover in the profession.

This project will build on existing connections between producers for networking and community support, ultimately improving the native plant economy in the PNW while also improving rural and urban landscapes. The project will increase knowledge of successful native plant production techniques, in both wholesale and retail markets, by compiling existing and developing new resources, leading tours at farms and nurseries, and hosting learning opportunities via the PNW Native Plant Forum and the National Native Seed Conference. Finally, we will support business success by hosting webinars and developing enterprise budgeting workshops that can help new growers (many of whom produce plants in their backyard) understand the true cost of doing business. All new and existing resources, along with a grower directory, will be housed in a new website for the PNW Native Plant Network.

This project has four inter-related objectives. Specifically, our team's efforts on this project will:

1. Increase the economic resilience of native plant growers, amidst volatile and unpredictable market conditions and higher production costs. A directory of native seed and plant producers in the PNW will be used to better track the number of new native plant growers entering the industry, as well the number of businesses which may have closed between directory updates which will occur 2-3 times per year.
2. Increase grower knowledge of successful native plant nursery business models, production practices, and marketing practices. We will evaluate grower knowledge in tandem with all education events (e.g. webinars, PNW native plant forum, farm tours) to assess growers' self-evaluated levels of change in knowledge with event and post-event surveys.
3. Increase the visibility of native plant growers to new customers, which will ultimately increase the abundance and diversity of native plants in restored and ornamental landscapes. We will track the number of hits to the grower directory, the number of times the directory is advertised at speaking events and in partner newsletters, and the number of attendees at events. External clicks to the directory from newsletters will be tracked. Potential speaking events include Native Plant Society of Oregon and Washington meetings and regional conferences such as CONNECT. We will track the number of attendees at events to track the impact made.
4. Increase the social resilience of native plant growers in a fragmented communications landscape by shifting towards a community led approach rather than a funding and policy driven approach. We will use post-event surveys to evaluate the importance growers place on networking opportunities, and the value they gained from online and in-person opportunities to network with other growers. We will also ask for feedback on how to improve for future events.