Welcome to Neighborhood Plants!

Years ago as I walked past barren lawn after barren lawn, I got an idea.  I wanted to turn my yard into something that would serve as a home not just for a mono-culture of a single grass, but for native plants, insects, and birds.  I missed hearing the buzz of tiny solitary bees, and seeing big beautiful butterflies floating around.  I missed the birds, and the flowers.  Grass just wasn’t doing it for me.

The first thing I did was get some wild flower seed mixes, buried them in the yard and waited….and waited…and nothing happened.  I did a little research and realized I had done just about everything wrong.  I planted the seeds at the wrong time, I planted them at the wrong depth, I hadn’t cleared the grass away, and a host of other issues.  Instead of giving up I purchased more seeds, this time instead of a mix I selected plants I think would look nice (and some that were edible), and followed instructions online for how to cold stratify the seeds, when to plant them and to my great surprise not only did they grow, they GREW!  I had way way more seedlings than I could fit in my yard, so I put out a sign on the fence “plants for sale” and to my even further surprise people actually wanted to buy them, then they started asking for more varieties, and then they asked for native shrubs and trees…fast forward a few years and here I am opening a website and growing hundreds of native plants every year from seed.

At the same time I was learning how to grow native plants, I was also expanding my garden, and my foraging practice.  I am constantly meeting new plants and thinking “can I eat this?”  It turns out that a great way to to get into plants is through your stomach!  There are so many delicious and edible plants and mushrooms growing all around us, and the more I got into harvesting, processing, preserving, and eating edible plants the more I also got into protecting and propagating them.  My relationship to my food, and my environment was changing.  I learned about indigenous cultures, food histories, colonial racism, environmental systems and so much more.  It was a wild ride, and one that isn’t done yet!  There is so much to learn about nature, and food, and history, and science that one can never run out of new things to explore.

This website is home to both the Neighborhood Native Nursery and the Urban Tree Collective.  The UTC is a group for people interested in eating good food, but also in caring for and learning about the world we share with so many amazing living things.  You can learn more about the Urban Tree Collective here or join the mailing list to stay up to date on events, here.