Grow It Forward is a new group of Seattle gardeners and households dedicated to growing valuable native tree and shrub seedlings in their yards, and then give them to habitat restoration organizations to use to restore critical habitats.
Grow it Forward is the brainchild of Jim Wright, a former environmental engineer and biologist, who is organizing the community to set up a “micro-nursery” on their own property where they each grow 100 seedlings for eventual rewilding efforts. A nice story was written on Mr. Wright recently in the Seattle Greenlaker.
The program works as follows:
Soil, nursery pots, landscape fabric, and commercially grown native seedling sprouts are distributed to volunteer gardeners. Each gets enough to make a 100 seedling micro-nursery.
Gardeners plant the seedling sprouts in the pots, which they lovingly tend as they grow for the next 2 years. If arranged in a square, each 100 seedling Micro-Nursery measures only about 4 feet by 4 feet.
After 2 years, the seedlings have grown bigger and are strong enough to better survive in the wild. Grow It Forward then collects and transports them to local sites undergoing habitat restoration.
Grow it Forward is accepting new applications to host your own 100 seedling micro-nursery! Volunteers pay the $95 material cost to produce the 100 seedlings. After 1 to 2 years when the seedlings are ready, we given them to the habitat restoration organizations who normally pay about $350 for 100 them! You can click here to apply. You will receive an email directing you to a crowdfunding web page to pay for your materials.
The program is also looking for volunteers with pickup trucks to deliver raw materials to seedling hosts on April 4, and then late this Fall to deliver finished seedlings to their eventual planting sites. If you are interested in volunteering to drive your pickup truck to make deliveries of the materials to some of the Micro-Nursery volunteers, or later, to deliver the finished seedlings to a restoration site, please email Mr. Wright at [email protected].
