On our satellite campus, visitors will find a full-size nursery where they can purchase the same plants that they see in our gardens. Whether they’re looking for hardy plants, houseplants, or tropical plants for a greenhouse, we’ll sell propagations of most of our featured species.
Propagation & Access
When we propagate plants for our gardens, we’ll also propagate plants for the nursery to sell. While the priority is ensuring that the Garden is well planted and protected from excessive propagation, we believe that there’s importance in distributing species that are largely inaccessible. This may help prevent poaching in the wild; illegal importation into the United States; and harmful removal of propagative material within the botanical garden.
Conservation Lite
While selling plants to visitors isn’t the most effective way to conserve a species, it’s a way to prevent the plant’s total extinction. If conservation fails in its native range, at least there are back up plants in cultivation that can be used to rejuvenate populations in the wild. There have been several instances where plants that were introduced to the trade prevented their species from disappearing completely. While we will work with other conservation organizations to prevent the continued degradation of ecosystems, preventing extinction in the wild is not always possible.
Raising Money
Our nursery will be a main source of revenue for the Garden since it will be open during all operating hours and will feature the weird and wonderful, in addition to the practical and hardy. Visitors will walk through the nursery on their way out of the satellite location, hopefully inspiring them to buy a plant or six.
