Today, you can order seeds online and get them delivered to your door with next-day shipping. However, organizations like Rare, a conservation charity in Waterloo Region and Wellington County, are opting for more sustainable methods of growing plants.
Their native plant propagation program sends a team out on the rare Charitable Research Reserve to sustainably harvest seeds from native plants.
“We do the program as a way to support our restoration, specifically if we’re doing restoration projects,” explained Rosalind Snyder, aconservation technician at Rare.
In advance, Rare’s team maps the locations of native plants using data from previous years. The collection typically starts in June, and the team goes out to collect seeds once a month until November.
Rare also hosts volunteer days on select Tuesdays in the summer, during which members of the public can participate in the process. Preregistration on Rare’s website is required for these events, and usually around five volunteers can accompany Rare’s team.
“That way, there are not too many people overwhelming the seeds. It’s just a small group of volunteers per month, basically, like we have these volunteer days posted to our website, and it’s first-come, first-served for people who are interested,” said Snyder, noting that last year Rare had a great turnout for the volunteer days.
“I think increasingly people are really intrigued and want to know more about our native seeds and native plants, because sometimes even for these seed collection walks, if we walk out there and the seeds aren’t ready [for harvesting], at least it’s a good chance to identify native plants and become familiar with what they look like.”
There is a wide array of native plants Rare looks to collect seeds from, including wild ginger and red columbine. If the seeds are ready to be gathered, they are collected and processed for stratification.
“Stratification is the process of essentially preparing the seed for winter-like conditions. All of our native plants have adapted to survive the winter. Most of the time in nature they’ll drop the seeds and then they’ll experience winter, and that is part of the process that kind of rejuvenates them to grow next year,” explained Snyder.
“We’ll often put them in like a damp paper towel, wrap them up, and then put them in the fridge for a couple of months. Different seeds have different times that they need to be stratified. Some only need to be put in the fridge for a month, sometimes they need two months, others need three months, so again it’s just kind of depending on the species.”
After stratification, the seeds are ready to be planted for the following season, when they will be placed in pots to grow. In March, the plants start off in an office with heat lamps. Once they grow large enough, they graduate to growing in the greenhouse.
“The Native Plant Propagation Program also has a greenhouse, where we were growing some of our native seeds, so once they get a little bigger, we’re able to move them to the greenhouse, where it’s because it’s nice and warm. In there, they grow quite big; they grow at an accelerated rate,” she explained.
“Part of the purpose of growing these plants is that we hope to use them in restoration, so when they grow nice and strong in our greenhouse, we can bring them in and plant them in areas where we’ve done invasive species removal.”
Throughout the year, Rare conducts invasive-species removals to target species such as garlic mustard, phragmites, yellow iris, and ground clover for ecosystem restoration.
“If we clear a patch of garlic mustard, often those areas are really easy to reinvade, because once an area is disturbed, that’s kind of how plants work – when you remove an area, other things can easily move in, especially other invasives,” explained Snyder.
“So, if we plant something else in its place, then it’s more likely to keep those invasive species out. So, planting our native species is a great way to not only keep out the invasive species, but also to increase biodiversity and increase the presence of native plants on the lands we steward.”
Since native plants have grown in the area and evolved in this landscape for thousands of years, local pollinators have evolved to live alongside them. This means local pollinators are well equipped to pollinate native species, and increasing the presence of native species increases the food options for pollinators.
Snyder added that another benefit of native species is that different varieties often flower at different times of the year.
“There are some that are flowering now, and late spring, early summer, mid-summer, and then you have those key species that still flower into the fall, and so that creates a source of pollination and nectar for insects and birds throughout the entire season.”
Collecting seeds from the same area also affects the plants’ resilience to the area’s climate.
“Oftentimes people notice that if you take seeds from up north and then bring them down south they tend to do okay, because up north these plants have adapted to have shorter seasons, and you know it’s colder up there, versus if people take seeds from the south and try and take them up north, they don’t do as well, because in the south they’re used to it being warmer, and to a slightly longer growing season.”
Beyond the native plant propagation events, Rare also has opportunities for the public to volunteer with invasive species pulls and gardening efforts.
For more information on volunteering, visit www.raresites.org/about/land-relations.
