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FRANKFORT, Ky. — Derby Day serves a dual purpose in Kentucky. The first Saturday in May is the day of the annual Kentucky Derby in Louisville. It’s also the unofficial day to begin planting most ornamental and horticultural plants in central Kentucky.
“A lot of folks use the Derby as a time line,” said Bill Holleran, greenhouse and nursery marketing specialist for the Kentucky Department of Agriculture. “We want to encourage everybody to look for nurseries and garden centers that provide locally-grown products, buy local and look for the Kentucky Proud logo.”
Dropseed Native Plant Nursery owner Margaret Shea, left, and manager Jeff Richmer arrange plants for sale. (Photo by Chris Aldridge) |
Dropseed Native Plant Nursery in rural eastern Jefferson County doesn’t just grow its plants locally; it grows only native plants. Dropseed specializes in flowers, shrubs, ornamental grasses and – new this year – trees that originated and grow wild in Kentucky.
“Native plants are extremely hardy,” said horticulturist Jeff Richmer, Dropseed’s manager. “They’re a lot more adaptive to fluctuations, much better than traditional landscaping plants. In Kentucky, as you know, it can be 30 (degrees) one day and 70 the next, flooding one week and dry the next.”
Plant ecologist Margaret Shea, Dropseed’s owner, said the reason for the native plants’ adaptability is simple: They lived here long before humans attached the name “Kentucky” to their habitat. “They’ve grown for thousands of years in Kentucky soil,” she said. “They’re used to Kentucky’s environment and insects because they’ve been here so long.”
All the plants Dropseed sells originated in central Kentucky. Richmer and Shea get permission from area landowners to comb their fields and forests, searching out seeds. The seeds of spring plants are sowed during February in flats inside Dropseed’s greenhouse, located behind Richmer’s home on a hillside overlooking scenic Brush Run Road.
Dropseed kicked off planting season last weekend at its annual spring plant sale, which featured at least 50 native species. The nursery’s biggest sellers are (in order) butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa), which features bright orange blooms; cardinal flowers (Lobelia cardinalis), whose bright red blossoms attract hummingbirds; and great blue lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica), which blooms for three to four weeks.
New varieties available at Dropseed this year are yellow wingstems (Verbesina alternifolia), which grow six to eight feet tall, and silky asters (Aster sericeus), which thrive in dry environments such as rock gardens. Dropseed also sells a mixture of seeds suited for either dry or wet areas.
“More and more people are going back to native plants,” Richmer added.
Shea said a Jefferson County developer contacted her recently asking what varieties Dropseed could provide. “I don’t know if anything will come of it,” she said, “but I think it’s great that a developer has native species on his radar.”
Dropseed Nursery is open from noon-7 p.m. EDT Fridays and 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturdays throughout this month. For more information, including directions, visit its Web site at www.dropseednursery.com.
Dropseed is one of hundreds of nurseries, greenhouses and plant retailers throughout the state that are listed on the Garden Center page on the KDA’s Web site, www.kyagr.com.
Holleran encourages local wholesale plant producers to contact him at bill.holleran@ky.gov. “I need to know the industry players,” Holleran said, noting he is compiling a list of producers’ e-mail addresses so he can link them with retailers. “I want to let people at the retail level know what’s available at the wholesale level.”
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Jeff Richmer examines seedings just about to sprout in Dropseed Native Plant Nursery's greenhouse. (Photo by Chris Aldridge) |
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