A visit to NYC Greenbelt Native Plant Nursery

The Ecotype Project visited the NYC Greenbelt Native Plant Nursery this week in Staten Island. This special nursery is also home to the Midatlantic Regional Seed Bank, an extraordinary collection of the seed of native plants growing from Virginia to New York.  Nothing like this exists in the Northeast… yet…

These folks are the true heroes of the seed sovereignty movement – with dirt under their fingernails to prove it.  Sefra Alexandra, CT NOFA’s Ecotype Project technical consultant, had a notebook full of questions answered and we left armed with knowledge and, perhaps most important, inspiration.

While currently we at The Ecotype Project are focused on developing a pipeline of  plants that gird our agrarian ecosystem, our visit reminded us that the plants needed to restore habitat at scale on coastal ecosystems, for example, may prove equally vital.  Seagrass to brace our coastal dunes for storm surges.  The baby ferns (photo below) will provide erosion control to areas of damp shade damaged in forest.  Farmers working to scale up local ecotype production for habitat restoration: a story we can all be proud of.