Imagine the future
GLENMONT — “From” and “for” are two significant words in the mission of Home Earth Alliance, a regional nonprofit dedicated to educating and inspiring the community to cultivate sustainable yards and outdoor spaces. With the opening of their newest enterprise, the IMAGINE Native Plant Farm, they are taking actionable steps to provide native seeds and plants both from and for the community.
“Our commitment at IMAGINE Native Plant Farm is to grow native plants from and for this region,” said Pam Skripak, co-founder and executive director. “It’s with seeds collected from our ecoregion, growing for our ecoregion.”
On Aug. 29, the Home Earth Alliance celebrated the grand opening of the IMAGINE Native Plant Farm in Glenmont, N.Y. The farm’s nursery is located at The Bioreserve, a large preserve dedicated to biological research.
“The farm is a natural, organic product of Home Earth Alliance, which essentially aims to educate, inspire, and
empower people to make positive, sustainable choices in their outdoor spaces,” said Kate Brittenham, co-founder.
The Home Earth Alliance developed from the observation of a growing interest in native plants and sustainable yards. “All of this is changing the paradigm of how we think about beauty and how we think of our yards,” said Skripak.
Providing education and access to native plants is vital to “familiarizing ourselves again with the native plants that have been here for millions of years, but we have somehow lost our connection to,” she added.
Rekindling this lost connection and looking to expand their local mission to a broader audience, Home Earth Alliance has made it their goal to break down barriers and forge a path forward for everyone.
“The farm came out of that desire to cultivate and grow native plants, ideally from locally sourced seeds from our area,” said Brittenham. “That would be our local ecotype, and it would be provided at a reduced cost for anyone.”
Throughout the process, they realized that one of the greatest barriers to implementing these changes was the cost of plants, especially native plants, which are in high demand and short supply.
“We wanted to eliminate barriers to access, or at least reduce those challenges as much as possible,” said Brittenham.
Despite the high demand for native plants, supplying them can be difficult. Seed collection for native plants is a delicate, complex process, and growing conditions have to be carefully recreated. To avoid diluting the genetics, native plants cannot be cloned and must be the ecotype from the region, for the region.
Providing access to native plants is essential to combating the many threats they face. The loss of habitat for native plants and animals, invasive species, and the replacement of native plants with cultivated derivatives have caused a crash in native populations, with consequences that have yet to be fully identified.
Skripak described this as a “new geological epoch” in the natural world. “The escalation of extinction among plants and animals is alarming and something we should be concerned about,” she said.
With this new native plant farm, Home Earth Alliance hopes to raise awareness about the issue, which has garnered increasing attention at the state and international levels.
“There’s a growing recognition,” said Skripak. “There’s a national movement and a global movement where people are finally beginning to recognize the connection
between our wildlife and plant populations and how we’re choosing to live, and what we’re doing to the earth.”
“It would be amazing if the Capital Region could really lead the way in New York state and provide an example,” said Brittenham.
“There is so much more we have to understand,” Skripak added. “We’re one little piece of this; we want to serve the greater Capital Region.”
While the IMAGINE Native Plant Farm is a major initiative of Home Earth Alliance, it is just one piece of their larger mission. The nonprofit hosts multiple programs throughout the year designed to educate the public, including Landscapes in Transition Tours, an Ecological Landscape Exhibit, and Garden Raising Bees programs.
The community is encouraged to participate in their work and programs, from purchasing plants on open house days to volunteering and learning more about the unique climate of the upstate region on their website, https://homeearthalliance.org.
“We’re trying to be out and present in the community as much as we can,” Skripak noted. “We have a lot of big ideas. Expanding our educational outreach and scaling up the farm’s production are our two large goals.”
“We want this to feel like a community effort,” Brittenham agreed. “It started that way, and we want it to continue that way.”
