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Northeast Seed Network – A seed strategy for the Northeast U.S.

by Michael Piantedosi, Director of Conservation, Native Plant Trust

Over the last few years, an increase in demand for New England native plants has intersected with a well-documented bottleneck in the supply chain: a shortage of locally-adapted seed from sustainably managed sources. Native Plant Trust and many partners, including Ecological Health Network, Eco59, Norcross Wildlife Foundation, and the Botanic Garden of Smith College among others, have launched the Northeast Seed Network to grow native plants in seed-increase plots, or seed-producing gardens. Seed from these plots will be used in ecological restoration projects and by nurseries to make locally-adapted plants more widely available.

From 2015–2017, we experienced a surge in the need for native, locally-adapted seed firsthand in region-wide habitat restoration of coastal areas that were damaged by Hurricane Sandy. The Native Plant Trust partnered with the Bureau of Land Management, Mid-Atlantic Regional Seed Bank, Chicago Botanic Garden, and North Carolina Botanical Garden, to collect seed for restoration throughout the Atlantic coast of the US. Native Plant Trust collected over 850 seed collections of large quantities, which assisted the restoration of nearly a dozen habitat restoration sites by providing abundant seed of the representative native flora. While this experience  taught us a great deal about sourcing restoration-scale seed, it was only available for a short window in response to a natural disaster. Ultimately our goal was to create a resource for this type of seed use, which with an increase in storm frequency and intensity, seemed only likely to increase in demand. 

In 2020, Native Plant Trust assessed our own seed-production, processing, and storage needs for the future. Our seed uses include banking rare species for conservation, and growing common species for habitat restoration projects and sale in our retail horticulture shops. The assessment confronted us with an increased demand and the need to address how to provide native seed in the New England region. 

In the past, many of our common species were grown from seed that our staff and volunteers collected sustainably in the wild throughout New England. Collection from wild populations alone cannot meet this increased demand, and more importantly, not without inflicting undue stress and damage to the wild source populations. In 2022, Native Plant Trust gathered stakeholders for a virtual symposium to devise a strategy to expand native seed supply in the Northeast. This set forth a region-wide initiative to address the need for a coordinated seed-increase program, education, training, and engagement with stakeholders who use native seed. 

Also in 2022, Nasami Farm received a grant from Northeast Sustainable Agriculture, Research, and Education to build five seed-increase plots and study their efficacy as a viable and sustainable native seed production method. In 2023, Nasami expanded its controlled-environment seed storage space and constructed a bulk seed-processing building to prepare for the nursery’s role as regional seed-distribution hub for the network. In 2024 we have expanded our ability to store large-quantities of native seed, both in a cold-dry room and long-term freezer facilities. We are poised to create a facility for cleaning large quantities of native seed to be active in 2024.

Native Plant Trust and its partners formed the Northeast Seed Network, which is structured with a hub and spoke design, with Native Plant Trust serving as the hub and playing a coordinating role across the region. With our many partners, we are building a network across seed and plant material supply chain users to increase the accessibility of genetically diverse, source-identified wild seeds and plants for the northeastern U.S. ecoregions.

Though in its early formation, the Northeast Seed Network and its partners are determined to build and reinforce connections between seed producers and seed users. We aim for this collective model to increase the accessibility of native seed and plant material to meet the region’s restoration goals. 

We also intend to make the seed used in these areas transparent by sharing the protocols for how the seed is collected, stored, and farmed, as well as providing information about where the seed was gathered and the ecoregion it represents. This last part is also crucial in the process of understanding the regional flora and its likely migration across the landscape. Plants will adapt if they are genetically diverse and have time and space to adapt; producing genetically diverse seed is one piece of that puzzle.

If you are interested in learning more, stay tuned for Northeast Seed Network trainings coming this winter, particularly in topics related to collecting, processing, and storing native seed. At any time if you would like to be kept in the loop, please join us as a member of the Northeast Seed Network—we’d be delighted to keep the conversation on native seed going.