Since 1980, our mission has been to bring people and nature together in their yards & gardens.

We educate, inspire, and assist people in our community in managing their lands, yards, and gardens to benefit native wildlife and promote awareness of the interrelationships of all living things.

We work towards this goal by promoting the use of native plants and offering classes and workshops on nature and gardening themes, such as Cavity Nesting Birds, Natural History of Butterflies, Butterfly Gardening, Planting a Refuge for Wildlife, Organic Gardening, Bird Identification, and many others. We also offer a landscape consultation, design, and installation service with a focus on native plants and wildlife. Most of all, we provide a well-trained staff of enthusiastic naturalists and horticulturists at our store every day to assist people toward this goal.

Why native plants?

Native plants, when planted in locations that meet their requirements, are well adapted to our climate and soils and have long-established ecological relationships with the animals that share their habitats. Since 1980, the nursery has been ahead of its time by promoting Florida native plants. Serious native plant interest in the United States didn’t come alive until 2007, when the book Bringing Nature Home was published.

Founders

Donna Legare and Jody Walthall met while students at the University of Florida’s School of Forest Resources & Conservation. Both were studying wildlife ecology. Even then, they shared a love of native plants. While in Gainesville, whenever an area was cleared for building or development, they would dig up plants and bring them home. When they graduated, Donna and Jody decided to forego getting master’s degrees in favor of putting what they loved and had learned into practice. They moved back to Tallahassee, where Jody’s mother had offered them a piece of the family property.

Right about the same time, Donna and Jody moved to Tallahassee, where state forester and native plant enthusiast Chuck Salter ran an ad in the paper for his nursery in Madison. It caught Jody’s eye, and he went to visit Salter. During the conversation, Chuck said he wished there were an outlet for his carefully collected and propagated native plants in Tallahassee. A light bulb went off, and a nursery was born.