Adding Native Plants to Your School Garden
By Andrea Berry, Executive Director
Have you considered adding native plants to your school garden to support biodiversity and ecosystem health? You should, and the Wild Seed Project can help!
Wild Seed Project is a Maine-based nonprofit that encourages the use of native plants in all landscapes (including school grounds!) to support the full lifecycle of pollinators, increase wildlife habitat, and build ecosystem resiliency for our changing climate. Our website is chock full of easy-to-read and easy-to-use resources about native plants and wild seeds, plus we offer classes on everything from rewilding your yard to winter seed sowing, and sell over 75 species of wild-type seeds from plants native to Maine and just beyond.
Why should you add native plants to your school gardens and school grounds? Native plants support vast numbers of insect species, are proven to attract birds more than feeders, and they sustain the full life cycles of pollinators, which can support vegetable garden production. Planting native plants from wild-type seeds is one of the best ways to ensure our landscapes are filled with enough genetically diverse plants to survive our rapidly changing climate, and is a tangible and easy action we can all take to sustain and build a resilient environment. Here’s a great list of native species perfect for schoolyards to get you started!
We are so grateful to teachers for all you do, and we’d like to enable more opportunities for youth to experience the joy and curiosity of growing native plants from seed. That’s why we’re offering two free seed packets to teachers and school garden coordinators from Maine and other northeastern states to use in their schoolyards or classrooms this seed sowing season. Each packet contains 300 seeds of an easy-to-grow species.
Now (yes, winter!) is the time to plant native seeds! Check out our website for more on Maine’s native plants and how you and your students can plant for beauty, biodiversity, and outdoor learning.
For more information, contact andrea@wildseedproject.net
