Borderlands Nursery & Seed

Deserts are difficult places for any organism to survive, let alone plants. Despite the challenges, rich and unique floras have evolved in deserts all over the world, supporting myriad other forms of life. Restoring these communities in human-disturbed areas is critical in solving so many ecological and cultural issues, and that is exactly what In Defense of Plants Podcast host Matt Candeias is discussing in this episode with Perin McNelis, BRN Native Plant Program Manager.

Shop the nursery through the growing season during our annual spring, monsoon, and fall plant sale events, on select Saturdays, Tuesdays and Thursdays 9AM - noon, or by appointment.

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Or, check out our pre-order delivery events to borderlands communities including Sierra Vista, Bisbee, Tucson, Tubac, and others!

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Shop online for pick-up at the nursery. We ship seed, but we do NOT ship container plants.

As consumption of the drink hits record levels in the U.S., wild agave plants are dwindling—but conservationists say there's a solution.

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Lesser long-nosed bats were already in trouble due to habitat loss, but thanks to determined conservation efforts made it off the U.S. Endangered Species List in 2018—the first bat species ever to do so. Down to about a thousand animals in the 1980s, the species had bounced back to around 200,000 throughout Mexico and the U.S. Southwest.

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Yet the continued boom in mezcal, coupled with climate change—which makes agaves flower earlier, before the bats arrive during their migration—could reverse these gains, conservationists warn. 

We could easily spend five or six hours discussing Francesca’s various conservation projects, but for this hour-long conversation, we zoned in one particularly innovative project that spans the US/Mexico border called "Bacanora for Bats: Binational Conservation and Sustainable Agave Spirits."