Native Plant Propagation and Nursery Management Class

Written by: Francesca Claverie

This last Saturday, June 8th, the Native Plant Materials Program hosted our first Native Plant Propagation and Nursery Management class at our nursery space in Patagonia, AZ. Our Native Plant Materials Program management has taught many workshops and classes before on seed collection, and propagation but we usually teach them through a grant, a conference, our summer school, and other consult services. This class was advertised for just over a month, and we are proud to report that we had a full class of 12 people attend the workshop and we couldn’t be happier about it’s success! All the participants were enthusiastic, keen, and asked some wonderful question and participated in fun nursery discussions from clonal propagation to bench-pallet quality.

The mission of our Native Plant Program is to promote biodiversity by providing access to restoration-quality native plant materials. Native plants have edible, medicinal, and aesthetic value and support basic ecosystem function. We seek to heal the land and ourselves by exploring a culture of place, centered on a rich relationship with our native flora. Part of this exploration centers on encouraging native plant interactions, and the creation of more regional programs that use local plant genetics for use in the wild and cultivated landscape. This class specifically covered a tour of our facilities, the importance of the National Seed Strategy, container plant production timelines, species palettes, seed propagation: scarification and stratification, clone propagation: hormone, cuttings types, disease and pest control, soil types, and greenhouse construction.

The next class our native plant program will offer is a 2-day wild seed collection and curation class in September.  We are not yet accepting sign ups for this class, but will be advertising it towards the end of summer. Wish us luck on this first nursery class, and stay tuned for more native plant classes throughout the year! If you have questions or inquiries email horticulture@borderlandsrestoration.org. Thanks!