“Locally grown plants are typically hardier than plants from outside the region. They’re better adapted to area conditions, like weather, soil, and precipitation.” Cory King - manager of Conservation Nurseries Program - explains.

The Nevada Division of Forestry (NDF) nursery program provides native and adapted plant materials, and technical assistance, to encourage private landowners and public land management agencies to make conservation plantings for windbreaks, shelter belts, woodlots, erosion control, food and cover for wildlife, post-fire restoration, and riparian restoration. Seedlings are graded and grown to sizes suitable for plantings on private and public lands.

“The Master Gardener Program is primarily self-funded, and this initiative is one of the key ways we finance our efforts,” said Rachel McClure, Master Gardener coordinator in Washoe County.

Plant starts were cultivated by staff and volunteers of Extension’s Master Gardener Program and the Experiment Station’s Desert Farming Initiative at the University’s Valley Road Field Lab and Greenhouse Complex and other University and partner locations. Both Extension and the Experiment Station are units of the University’s College of Agriculture, Biotechnology & Natural Resources, which seeks to promote availability and consumption of healthy local foods statewide, as well as to stimulate and assist the state’s agriculture and horticulture industries.