Where Do Our Plants Come From?

 At the nursery, I often get asked where our plants come from. The question may be phrased any number of ways, depending how much the person asking knows about our business or the horticulture trade as a whole. So, I thought I'd talk a little bit about how we grow plants for sale here in the far north.

The bulk of our plants come from other nurseries as bare-root, plugs, or young potted plants. If you ever see the term "liner" in conjunction with the horticulture industry, that term can refer to any of the above. They're simply young plants meant for growing on to a retail-ready size. We deal with many young plant suppliers to offer a wide variety of neat plants. This is how we're able to offer so many new varieties that are commercially available. Most plants grow quickly and can be potted in March to April for sale in spring. The biggest exception to this are Hostas. For most of the Hosta varieties we offer, it can take a year to grow to a retail size; although we do get some larger sized liners that are sold the same year they're planted.

Young Polemonium 'Golden Feathers' will be ready in May.

A Hosta from 2025 ready for potting. This is a mini variety, hence the small size! 

Sometimes plants in the nursery or garden need division to maintain health and vigor. This is a great way to offer smaller numbers of older or uncommon plants that often aren't commercially produced. If not done right, this can also be a great way to spread diseases. We sanitize all tools (including hands!) with 70% alcohol between working with different plants. If we don't know the chain of custody of a plant, we may test for viruses. We take plant health pretty seriously here!  

These Iris 'Purple Flame' were divided in March and will be ready for sale in May.

We produce some of our plants from cuttings of plants here in the nursery or the garden. Because of our short growing season, our period for rooting plants is very short. We generally have to take cuttings before the end of June if we want them to survive winter. June is our busiest month, so it can be challenging to get cuttings taken and rooted. We sometimes will force a plant in the greenhouse so we can take cuttings earlier. Some woody cuttings can be taken during the winter dormancy period; although we don't propagate many plants this way here. 

These Lonicera 'Major Wheeler' are from a wholesaler, but we also produce this plant from cuttings.

We grow a lot of plants from seed here as well. A lot of our seed growing is geared towards new plants for the gardens. Seed often comes from American Primrose Society and North American Rock Garden Society seed exchanges. These plants will eventually find their way to the nursery via division, cuttings, or seed produced here. We also collect seed from the gardens or from select natural habitats, both on and off the property, as well. A lot of this seed is to restore habitat here, but some does make its way to the nursery. 

Viola adunca seedlings from 2025 ready for repotting.

Viola adunca seedlings potted up. Most will be planted here, but some may make their way to the nursery.

Actaea pachypoda seed was sowed in fall 2023, and those plants are now ready for potting for sale. 

The last way we produce plants is also the method we use last. We don't do a lot of our own grafting. In fact, I hadn't done any grafting for close to 30 years. But I did some this past week. I'm hoping to do more grafting here in the future as it allows us to offer some harder to find woody plants that aren't widely propagated. 

We also supplement with finished plants from other wholesale nurseries. Finished plants are already potted and ready to sell. This allows us to have a wider selection without having to grow a lot of any given plant. This is a great way for us to offer plants that people might be looking for when shopping here at the nursery. If someone requests 3 bee balm, I don't need to grow 50 of them, I can simply buy 6 of them.  

We start heating the greenhouses in early March when new plants start to arrive. This allows most of them to be ready in May. It takes time for them to grow roots and for foliage to fill out. It also takes time for overwintered plants to emerge from dormancy. We will continue potting plants until late July most years. 

One of the challenging things is early shipping requests. People in warmer climates heat up much earlier than us and sometimes request earlier shipping. Unfortunately we can rarely accommodate early shipping since most of our plants aren't ready yet. Occasionally an order only contains overwintered woody plants or evergreen perennials; those we're able to ship in April once weather stabilizes a little. But that's rare. We generally start shipping plants in May because that's when they're ready to ship. Some may not be ready until June! 

So there you have it. A quick overview of how we produce all the cool plants we sell.