With erratic spring weather such as dramatic temperature swings, spring can be more challenging than fall for successful establishment of your new plants. On the other hand, it’s a great time to get spring and summer perennials established while enjoying a whole season of color and creating wildlife habitat! The key is transplanting correctly and being careful with your watering patterns. 

To make sure that your plants thrive, review this list of dos and don’ts for spring planting. 

Do

• Plant newly purchased plants right away if you can! The sooner you get them in the ground, the faster they can make new roots. 

• Be sure you’re planting your plant in the sun/shade conditions it requires.

• Ensure that both the new plant and the planting hole are moist. Plants like our herbaceous perennials, which tend to be in smaller pots, will dry out quickly, so they must be planted soon.

• Note that many of those plants in small pots are bursting to get out of their pots! Some of our 4” perennials may be root-bound. When you plant them, ensure that you carefully massage, cut, and open the roots so they can spread down and out while in the ground. Be careful to open up the root systems so they are no longer bunched up.

• Dig broad holes (~2-3x the width of the pot, and as deep as the roots) and cultivate to loosen the soil to aid root penetration. 

• After planting, make a small dam/watering well outside the perimeter of the plant to slow and focus water, ensuring it penetrates the roots. 

• Water your plants thoroughly after planting. Watering just enough is crucial for new plants. Knowing when to water can be difficult to gauge in the springtime, when we may have spells of dry weather. Err on the side of more frequent watering in the first week or so after transplanting, especially when the weather heats up rapidly! However, eventually — after the initial establishment during stressful weather patterns — you want to aim for less frequent, but deeper watering

• To check your soil moisture, you can stick a finger into the soil. If the soil feels dry a few inches down, then it might be time to water. Monitor them for changes that signify stress, like wilting or yellowing leaves. However, be mindful that overwatering can also mimic the same stress as underwatering. 

• Apply a coarse woody mulch and ensure the trunks and/or stems are not buried. 

• Err on the side of planting a little above the ground level; this allows room for mulch application and ensures that as the plant settles into the soil, it won’t be too deeply planted (which leads to waterlogged roots). 

• Stake, but only if necessary to stabilize the roots, and only for the first year. 

• Remember that even if you purchased a drought-tolerant plant, it may take a few seasons of monitoring before it can survive with no watering (or only minimal watering) during dry periods.

• Keep in mind what soil conditions your plant prefers and aim to mimic that whenever possible for best results. For example, woodland plants may prefer rich moist soils, whereas plants that grow along coastlines may need better-draining soils.  
  

Don’t:

• ⊘ Do not leave the plants root-bound when planting. 

• ⊘ Do not prune top growth until the plant is well past the period of transplant stress (except for broken or dead branches or clearly spent flower parts). Top pruning at planting encourages the plant to put energy into top growth instead of root development and cutting off green parts of perennials before they’ve gone dormant eliminates an energy source the plant is still using. 

• ⊘ Do not plant too deeply.  Plant up to ~1 inch above the planting hole and then mulch to the edge of the roots. 

• ⊘ Do not amend the soil directly in the hole! Top dress with compost under coarse woody mulch on the top of the soil surface.

Some of the native plants we sell may seem small in the pot, but will become mighty in the ground! Despite us providing TLC — sometimes for years as we rear plants from seeds, cuttings, or small salvage specimens — we find that many species do not flourish in the pots: they are eager to escape the bounds of their plastic prison and run free in your landscape!

Additionally, our sale times do not always correspond with the ideal time for all species to be at their best. In early May, some native perennials are just starting to peek out of the pots, so you’ll have a robust plant, it just will not be fully showing yet. Conversely, during our fall sale, native spring ephemerals like Trilliums are completely missing! You’ll have a beautiful plant in your pot, but you won’t be able to enjoy it until the following spring.

Potted plants grow in containers that range from very small to very large. Here is why we offer plants throughout this range of sizes:

1. “Good things come in small packages!” This is our motto wherever possible, especially when it comes to herbaceous perennial plants, which tend to grow fast. We like to offer as many 4-inch and quart-sized perennials as we can, because the price is much more affordable than a large plant, and the small plant you purchase will grow faster in your landscape than in a pot. (And with prices escalating in recent years, especially for “fancy” plants like Hellebores and Epimediums, we really try to go small and less expensive when we can.)

Contrast that principle with:

2. “I don’t have time to wait!” When it comes to plants that will ultimately be large in your landscape, we try to offer larger sizes from the start if we can. We all love “instant landscape” if we can afford it! But we err on the side of a reasonable “large” size, as again, the bigger the plant, the more we’ve invested (and you will have to pay) and also the more water it will require for you to get it established. Especially with both slow-growing plants (e.g., native huckleberries, some native deciduous trees and shrubs), and screening or hedgerow plants (e.g., broad-leaved native and water-wise evergreens in the 6-10 ft. range), if we can offer you a 3-5-gal plant, we will do so. Some of the trees/shrubs we offer in 5-gal to 20-gal pots would cost hundreds of dollars in regular retail nurseries.

Yes, we’ll have a pot donation day a little while after each of our sales.

Otherwise, we will accept pots, though we need to connect with the donor in advance to plan to meet them at our nursery (which is not open to the public) and to share what pots we can actually use (if you have others not from our sale). Please select “plant pot donations” in our contact form here, and someone will get back to you about a date and time to meet at our holding beds.

Dropping pots off when picking up plants from the sale can also work if you give us some advanced notice.

Generally, we accept 4" pots, quarts, and ideally 2-gallon and up, though we will accept 1-gallon if they are hard-sided pots (preferring hard-sided overall, but sometimes willing to take soft-sided #2/3 if they are in good shape).

Thank you for thinking of us!

Fall Planting

Fall is an ideal time to plant all types of plants! Think about bulbs: we plant in fall to give them time to develop roots for a long healthy life. This is also true for our trees, shrubs and perennials.

Here are some basic Do’s and Don’ts when planting. For more general information, please navigate to our Fall Planting page.

Do

• Plant newly purchased plants right away if you can! The sooner you get them in the ground, the faster they can make new roots for next spring and summer and be safe from winter freezes.

• Ensure that both the new plant and the planting hole is moist.

• Massage the roots to open them up so that the healthy roots make direct contact with the soil.

• Dig broad holes with roughened sides and cultivate to loosen the soil to aid root penetration.

• After planting, make a small dam/watering well outside the perimeter of the plant to slow and focus water, ensuring it penetrates the roots.

• Apply a coarse woody mulch and ensure the trunks and/or stems are not buried.

• Err on the side of planting a little above the ground level; this allows room for mulch application and ensures that as the plant settles into the soil it won’t be too deeply planted (which leads to waterlogged roots).

• Stake, but only if necessary to stabilize the roots, and only for the first year.

• Gently water in.

• Monitor the root ball for the first few weeks to ensure it does not dry out. Even if it has rained, the moisture does not necessarily get to the root ball.

Don’t:

• ⊘ Do not prune top growth, except for broken or dead branches or clearly spent flower parts. Top pruning at planting encourages the plant to put energy into top growth instead of root development and cutting off green parts of perennials before they’ve gone dormant eliminates an energy source the plant is still using.

• ⊘ Do not plant too deeply. Plant up to 1 inch above the planting hole, and then mulch to the edge of the roots.

• ⊘ Do not amend the soil directly in the hole! Use only coarse woody mulch on the top of the soil surface.

Winter Protection

If you cannot plant your newly purchased plants until spring, there are ways to protect them. Even hardy plants will not tolerate frozen roots: they must be protected from freezes, heavy winds and other winter hazards.

A few things you can do to protect your potted plants:

• Place the containers in a protected location, where they’ll stay warmer and out of the wind.

• Ensure that the roots do not dry out.

• If a cold snap is expected, cover the containers with leaves, straw, burlap, old bedsheets or lightweight blankets.

• If you have a lot of small pots (especially 4-in., quarts, and 1-gal), make a winter storage bed by using an old kiddy pool (shop used!) to arrange your pots, then be sure they are well insulated with woodchip mulch or other bulky organic matter (or burlap) that can insulate the interstitial spaces between plants. Punch a few holes in the bottom so it doesn’t hold winter rains.

Resources for more detailed information

Fall Planting (Native Plant Salvage Foundation)

Winterizing Your Yard (wsu.edu)

Preparing Perennials for Winter (wsu.edu)

Our plants come from a variety of sources:

1. Our number-one source is the hard work and years of dedicated love and nurturing provided by our volunteers and staff! We coordinate with local developers to seek permission to rescue some plants before the bulldozers arrive. We also do a lot of propagation of plants, both from seeds and cuttings. All of these “home-grown” sources take years of labor and materials to bring native plants from source to your shopping cart! For instance, one small huckleberry may be in our care for 3-5 years before it’s ready for our customers.

2. Further development of bareroot stock, plugs, and bulbs. We also seek out interesting native and regionally native species available from wholesale specialty nurseries throughout our region. Buying these plant parts in bulk allows us to bring consistent plant material to our customers, and test out its hardiness for our local conditions (some of these regional native species end up failing for us, so we know not to share them).

3. Regional wholesale nurseries. We have relationships with Thurston County nurseries as well as large suppliers from northern Washington to southern Oregon. We track new varieties, hard-to-find specialty plants, and tried-and-true native and water-wise species that thrive in our local conditions. When we find plants we think our customers will like, or that we want to trial first in local sustainable landscaping projects, we do our best to bring them to our nursery, and ultimately to you. We work with nurseries that do not use neonicotinoid pesticides, and we do our best to buy stock that has been grown organically — mirroring the practices of our own nursery.

4. Donations. We accept a limited number of donations from divisions from reliable sources (mostly our own volunteers or local non-profit organizations known to use organic practices and maintain weed-free sites). We then nurture those new plants, bulbs, or cuttings until they are ready for their new life making habitat and protecting water resources out in our local community!