Native Seed Gardeners

Rare Native Plants: Free to good homes!

Welcome to the Native Seed Gardeners (NSG) located in Barrington, Illinois. In the program you will join other enrolled Native Seed Gardeners of every level of gardening experience who want to save our rare native species that bring beauty and interest to their home landscape. With the desire to help save these species, you too can enroll to receive these free native plants. All we ask in return is your commitment to grow the plants in your home gardens and return the seeds they produce to the NSG for the restoration of their species in our local ecosystems. The seeds will be dispersed in these restorations where their species are vital in maintaining the health and diversity of the ecosystems. We now know through domestic and international movements that planting more natives in our landscapes, directly benefits all living things—which includes you too!

The NSG native species that you will receive as starter plants, have evolved and adapted to survive in our region’s climate and soil through the millennia. They once grew in abundance and thrived in our prairie, savanna, woodland, wetlands and their combinations, but due to many challenges, their populations declined to further jeopardize these once healthy and diverse ecosystems.

Given the challenges, the development of the NSG program began with early discussions between the Audubon-Chicago Region and the Citizens for Conservation (CFC) and later with the Spring Creek Stewards (SCS), in Cook County, and the Friends of Spring Creek Forest Preserve. Together, they wanted to know how to overcome the challenges to produce more of the crucial native seeds that their local restoration projects needed in Barrington and the surrounding counties. They decided that the North Branch Restoration Project in Cook County would be the model for the new program that has become the Native Seed Gardeners.

Since then, CFC and SCS have remained involved with NSG, and CFC now includes it in many of the other CFC programs they support. With the formation of the Barrington Greenway Initiative (BGI) in recent years, the BGI has incorporated other ecological restoration projects from the Cook, Lake and McHenry Counties, as well as CFC’s NSG program.

In the NSG program, you as a volunteer NSG growing the NSG starter plants in your home gardens can overcome the challenges faced in restorations to provide them with the following benefits from your gardens and the seeds you return:

  • Provide special attention for the rare NSG species that are from: small populations or populations that are not easily found locally in the thousands of acres of natural lands; slow to mature species that need more time to produce seed; are short-lived perennials that gradually produce less seed with age, but they can be eventually supplemented with NSG starter plants of the same species to sustain the seed production.
  • Protect the plants from predation using a greater selection of deterrents such as sprays, water motion detectors and fences.
  • Water the plants as needed in times of stress or drought to avoid the plant’s tendencies to stop flowering and consequently, the loss of seed production too.
  • Fertilize the plants as needed in the first year until they are established. Thereafter, leave the plant’s dry, decaying plant materials in place, to mulch and add its nutrients to the plant and to provide protection for the over-wintering plants and animals.
  • Test the seeds for ripeness many times as needed before they are collected at the right time of maturity. This is especially crucial for those species that have a very short collection period.
  • Remove the invasive species that sprout among the natives before they establish and deprive the native plants of their essential sunlight, nutrients in the soil and space for their growth and seed production.
  • Safely store the seed you collect until they are completely dry and return them to NSG without threat of mold that affects the seed’s viability.
  • Monitor the precious plants and collect their seeds from your home garden rather than from the open fields under restoration, which is convenient for you in saving time and travel.
  • Join the increasing number of volunteers collecting more seed from more natural lands and native home gardens. Your desire to restore our threatened species has value in your relationships with family, community and the environment.
  • Add new NSG starter plants periodically of the same NSG species that grow in your gardens, to introduce more genetic diversity to the seed produced from the cross-pollination between both NSG natives.
  • Increase the number of acres planted with NSG natives in home gardens — as small as a square foot, along the edge of a driveway or in the entire home landscape, which may eventually recuperate the naturalized lands that have been lost due to invasive species degradation and urban development.
  • Support the NSG program that serves as a model for communities beyond our region, state and country in restoring our natives and environments for the health and diversity of all living things.

Once you enroll and qualify to become a Native Seed Gardener, the NSG starter plants are given to you through the NSG Plant Distribution. The distribution is typically scheduled in late spring with an email invitation that includes information about the species and details for the distribution such as where to pick up the plants since they are not shipped.

Upon review of the information, you pre-select only those species that are suitable to grow in the conditions of your home garden taking into consideration the amount of daily sunlight, the moisture in the soil and the space the plant needs to grow to maturity.

The species you pre-select must not be presently growing in your home gardens to avoid cross-pollination and the transfer of undesirable genetic traits between the same species, but with unknown genes.

The starter plants you receive are grown in local greenhouses and in the nurseries of area CFC volunteers. They are germinated from the local “ wild “ seed from native wildflowers, grasses, shrubs and vines growing in the prairie, savanna, woodland, wetlands and combinations of these ecosystems.  Their seeds have the genetic traits from species that survived and were collected by volunteers with permission— from local lands and fragmented remnants that have remained natural within 25 miles of the CFC offices. Their progeny will continue to evolve and adapt to thrive into the future for the ecological health of our habitats.

Reports from the field periodically list NSG species such as the following, that are finally growing in our local restoration projects. Their plants germinated from seeds that came exclusively from those that were returned by the Native Seed Gardeners and the CFC/NSG nurseries located at CFC:

Ceanothus americanus / New Jersey tea
Chelone glabra / Turtlehead
Heuchera richardsonii  / Prairie alum root
Hieracium umbellatum / Canada hawkweed
Dichanthelium  scribnerianum /   Scribner’s panic grass
Phlox glaberrima  var. interior  / Marsh phlox
Prenanthes alba / White lettuce
Scutellaria parvula / Small skullcap
Solidgo patula / Swamp goldenrod
Viola pedatifida / Prairie violet

…and the list continues to grow!

With your desire to help with a plant and its seeds, please become a Native Seed Gardener to
Plant NSG native species–Return their seed–Restore their species! “
Together, we help the Citizens for Conservation and the local restorations projects in
“saving living space for living things”.

PLEASE

ENROLL

THANK YOU!

Reprinted NSG Articles: