Rachel Cook
One of the biggest questions for native plant enthusiasts is where to buy plants. Tara Littlefield, Jeff Nelson, and I wanted to improve the existing Native Plant Nursery list to help KNPS members find the right nursery to buy from. The existing Native Plant Nursery list was primarily contact information, and we want to share more about the plants and services offered. We used the Indiana Native Plant Society website as inspiration for updating our nursery list.
There are so many nurseries in Kentucky, how do you know what type of native products they are selling: cultivars vs locally collected seed, plants or seeds only, pollinator-friendly, or edibles? These were some of the many questions we thought were important to members, but answers were difficult to find. Who best to answer these questions than the nurseries themselves! To find nurseries, we used the existing nursery list and suggestion from the members of our KNPS Facebook group. I focused on Kentucky nurseries, but included nurseries in other states that were within an hour. With Jeff’s technical expertise, we created an online survey that I emailed to nurseries. After receiving most of the responses, I created a new template and updated the KNPS website, https://www.knps.org/native-plant-nurseries/.
After the initial update, we opened the survey up to the public! Now any nursery can use this link, https://www.knps.org/native-plant-supplier-form/, to fill out the survey and be included on the website. We are also working to create a page for native plant swaps and sales events using the same link. Do you have a nursery you would like included? Send them the survey, we would love to highlight more native plant suppliers!