Native Plant Garden Styles: Let's Get Messy Picture your home's junk drawer. We all have one. That place that stuff gets tossed that you neither have the time nor inclination to organize. Sure, once in a while (especially now that were all home more!) we dump it out and find treasure we thought long gone. There is satisfaction in order, a sense of accomplishment and sanity. But I invite you to embrace a titch of disarray, particularly ..read more

*Most of you have probably talked to Dave on the phone at one time or another and we finally convinced him to write for the blog! Be on lookout for answers to your more technical questions! This time of year, we get a lot of questions about how to manage areas that were planted the previous fall, winter or spring. All the tips given in this blog pertain to freshly seeded areas only ..read more

Year Two: My How You've Grown! As I've previously shared, I'm a grandma of twins...preemie twins. As the saying goes, "days go slow, years go fast" when rearing kids. My grandbabies turn two this month and I am in awe of how far they've come. From NICU to careening down the street into my arms, my two-year-olds are definitely picking up speed. The same is true of my garden two-year-olds. All my seeded babies are ..read more

My Instagram feed is full of friends’ photos of monarch eggs on their milkweed. I, on the other hand, have been waiting like an expectant mother for the first monarch mama to find my milkweed patch. Of course, maybe I haven’t been looking at the right time. After all, she is less aware of me than I of her. Today, my wait is over. Mama arrived along with bees and other bugs. As I stealthily ..read more

First Year Native Seedings: The Sequel Alright folks...I'm sure you were waiting for the follow-up on first year seedings, so here we go! Below is a photo that shows the current growth of the plot. As you can see, the growth is still slow. This is typical for the first season and can be from a variety of factors including the mulch source. We used a typical bagged mulch from a local hardware store for this case study ..read more

First Year Native Seedings: We've Got Flowers! Here we are in late July and we finally have some flowers! Black-eyed Susan, Indian Blanket, Partridge Pea and Lemon Mint have bloomed and are ready to host our pollinator friends. The weather has been hot and dry which has likely lead to slow growth this season. Remember, we haven't done any watering or weeding in this plot. The weed pressure is the same or less as we have seen ..read more

Why You Should Grow Native Grasses I often feel some folks wince just a little when they read seed mix contents and grasses / sedges are in the line-up. It's like a new food item on the menu. "Hmmm...I'm not sure I'll like that." Generally, our experience with grass is lawn or large, plume-y clumps decoratively placed around office park entrances. Just like native wildflowers or forbs, native grasses or graminoids "work ..read more

The End of the First Growing Season The leaves are falling and it's time to put the cargo shorts in the closet. The growing season is coming to an end and I'm sure you have some questions on how to put your prairie to bed for the winter. The fact is your prairie is still active during the winter months. The seed that was sown or has fallen is going through a cold and moist stratification process. This occurs as we have ..read more

Everything I've Ever Learned About HOPE I Learned From Plants I am going to make an assumption. If you're an OPN Seed patron or just a casual visitor to our website, you have an interest in plants. You may even have a deeper interest in the ecological significance of native flora to pollinators, water and soil conservation or the beauty in local leaf and flower.No matter which category you fall into, you likely see the natural world as important ..read more

Here's What's Happening in Year Two of our Native Seeding The plants have been busy over the winter and spring! Perennials have been putting down roots and starting to emerge to diversify your plot. You should be seeing some more species than you did the first year at this point. Year two is typically filled with vibrant and beautiful yellow flowers. Black-eyed Susan tend to be the dominant species in the second season as they are mostly ..read more