About
Sheep Native Plant Nursery is a native plant nursery located on the southern edge of Seattle at 11450 Roseberg Ave S, Burien, WA 98168.
The first seeds of thought for a native plant nursery were sewn shortly before buying my house (this location) in 2009. While meandering on the web, I came across a website promoting native plant use for residential yards. At the time, I liked hiking and being outdoors, so it sounded like a nice idea, but it wasn't for me.
After purchasing the house, I initially thought about turning the entire property into fruit trees and fruit bushes, something my mom did to our yard when I was growing up, but it never felt like the correct idea. Then I remembered that native-plant-promoting website and thought I could give the slope to nature, and keep the flatter, top area for fruit trees. Other ideas such as blueberries and small B&B houses were batted around, but still nothing sat right.
After conceding the slope to nature, and after some exploring and restoration work, I thought it would be awesome if I could get the neighbors to come together to turn the entire creek & ravine into a local habitat and trail system. This led to the creation of a nonprofit (which was soon after closed for inactivity) and also lead to extensive thoughts and research on how best to remove the invasive species (the area was covered in ivy, laurel, blackberry bushes, and others) and on how best to restore the native species. I wanted to both resuscitate the fragmented populations of the surviving native plants (the more unusual ones being trillium, bleeding heart, maidenhair ferns, and monkey flower) and to bring back the species that probably existed here in the past but had since been extirpated.
After years of research on native habitat restoration practices, studying about individual plants, my own planting failures (and successes), and learning about current sources to purchase native plants, I decided that if I wanted plants that were truely as local to my area as possible, I would need to grow them myself. Which then lead to the thought, if I'm going to grow the optimized balance of both local and diverse genetics, then why not grow extra, spread them to neighbors, and start a business at the same time! So around the year 2020, the idea had solidified, I would convert the flat area to a native plant nursery, and eventually (not accomplished yet) turn the slope into a mini neighborhood park with a public easement, a loop trail, and benches.
