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Your yard can
help the planet.

There has never been a more important time to cultivate resilient landscapes welcoming to life. By incorporating even a few plants local to our region, we can help restore ecological safety on the patches of land we call home.

These special plants:
- provide food and shelter for thousands of birds, insects, and wildlife,
- draw carbon out of the atmosphere more effectively than even trees,
- alleviate flooding with their extensive root systems,
- prevent baby caterpillar losses when planted under trees,
- and are a form of “tree heat insurance” thanks to their moisture-retaining abilities.

One Nashville resident offered this feedback unsolicited: “I’ve been trying for awhile to get more native plants in our yard, but between the research and finding plants in stock, it’s been pretty overwhelming. This initiative is like a dream come true!”

  • Our plants start like these...

  • and grow

  • ...into these.

“In an urbanizing world, the pollinator health crisis is one problem that an individual urban dweller can truly do something about.”
— Damon Hall, PhD

Conservation Outcomes

Research conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey indicates that plantings of multiple, smaller pockets of native plants are just as important as efforts aimed at large-acre operations.

Our goal is to enhance and expand the ecological footprint of Nashville’s parks, creating habitat corridors and migration oases. The dots on this map resulted from our 2023-24 plant co-ops.

“If a garden can link with other gardens and green space, it can become part of that connective webbing that will allow species to interact and respond to environmental pressures.” - Isabella Tree, Book of Wilding

In 3 years, we have distributed over 20,000 native plants to Nashville & the surrounding Cumberland River Basin.

  • A fritillary butterfly & bee sharing swamp milkweed.

  • A box turtle munching on clustered mountain mint.

  • Buddies with a maximillian's sunflower.

  • Versute sharpshooters cozy on a wild bergamot leaf.

  • A spider's home in woodbine vine.

  • Neighbors with lots of native plants!

  • An Eastern green frog found in narrowleaf mountain mint.

  • Goldenrod soldier beetles making more - thanks, anise hyssop.

  • A broadhead skink sheltering under 'John Clayton' honeysuckle vine.

  • Monarch caterpillar siblings on common milkweed.

  • A bee with orange pollen saddlebags from false indigo.