The Garden for Life Native Plant Nursery is Open for Shopping!

The Garden for Life Native Plant Nursery, located next to the tall greenhouse at SOREC, is open for business!  The nursery is run by Jackson County Master Gardeners and is open on weekdays. While the nursery is staffed only on Wednesday mornings, 9 am – noon, you can still shop Monday through Friday. If no one is there, choose your plants, pull the PRICE TAGS, and take them inside to pay at the main office. Only plants that have price tags should be taken, as those without are not ready for sale. Cash or checks are preferred, but if the Plant Clinic is open, they can process credit/debit card purchases. Office staff returns the price tags to us, so we can track our sales.

While the nursery exists to propagate and promote the sale of native plants, we do have some non-natives and food plants as well. Most of these have come to us from Josephine County Master Gardeners’ plant stock when Josephine County closed down their extension services. A crew from JCMGA went over on Saturday, July 20th to help remove supplies from their greenhouses, storage sheds and plant racks. Some of the plants we brought back are native birch, cedar, fir and pine trees, Oregon grape, and dogwood, as well as some (non-native) variegated iris and cedars. There are also many grape plants. These have all been placed in the nursery ready for sale.

Since the nursery is bursting with plants, now is a great time to buy.  However, if you plan to buy plants from the nursery before our Fall Festival on September 24th, we recommend you keep the plants in their containers, in partial shade, and keep them evenly watered until October. Our scorching summers are not the time to plant out nursery stock. Wait until daytime temperatures are 80 degrees or less to plant new plants in your yard. Triple digit temperatures are stressful for everyone!

Currently we have beautiful native coreopsis, and a lovely Northeast native Brown-eyed Susan in bloom in the nursery. Both do well in irrigated garden beds. The coreopsis will be more drought tolerant, as it is an Oregon native. We also have many beautiful shrubs for sale. Ninebark grows fifteen feet high and wide and has a beautiful light pink bloom as leaves are emerging. This is one of our earliest blooming shrubs – so important for our early flying bees – and is a great addition to a hedgerow or fence line. We also have a variety of native grasses, which are important to plant among your perennials and shrubs, as they increase water infiltration, provide sugars and exudates that enrich the soil microbiome and are the obligate host plants for our skipper butterflies.

Come and shop at your Garden for Life Native Plant Nursery!

 

Garden for Life!