State program aims to make markets for native plants

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- More than a century ago, westward-bound pioneers emerged from the forests and savannahs of the East and came upon the Midwestern prairies. Halting their creaking wagons, the travelers might have wondered for a moment at the brilliant, Technicolor life humming around the towering bluestems, multicolor coneflowers and myriad other plants.

History would prove any romance with the landscape to be fleeting.

Within a generation, the "sodbusters," as the early settlers were called, ripped through the deep prairie undergrowth with steel plows and transformed the region's most iconic landscape into farms and pastures. Today, the Midwestern prairie is all but gone.

An increasing number of Missouri growers and landscapers would like to reverse the destructive trend. With the help of a state program called Grow Native!, they hope to restore some of these fragile ecosystems by launching a new market for native plants.

Once the mainstay of large projects to reclaim prairies, improve the environment and beautify roadsides, native plants are now creeping into commercial landscaping and the backyards of suburban America. More and more, busy homeowners are complementing lush, green lawns with landscaping rocks and native plants as a way to cut down on time-consuming maintenance.

Officials with Grow Native! say the market will continue to expand, and Missouri farmers stand to profit.

Farmers applying for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Conservation Reserve Program, or CRP, have a better chance of winning a contract if they choose to grow native plants, said Darlene Johnson, who manages the CRP program in Missouri for the Natural Resources Conservation Service, a USDA agency.

Building support

Judy Allmon, program coordinator for Grow Native!, sees promise in niche markets such as the development of echinacea for cold remedies; restoring habitats for hunting grassland birds, such as quail; and selling seed for specialty forage industries such as cattle grazing.

Growers won't be the only ones profiting. Dwindling populations of wildlife, such as quail and prairie chickens, might come back if the environment returns to its original state.

Support for the Grow Native! program is already building in cities such as Columbia. Designers of some municipal projects have been using native wildflowers, grasses, trees and shrubs to prevent erosion near streams and culverts, said Tom Wellman, a civil engineer with the Columbia Public Works Department.

At the entrance of Cosmo Park, for example, willows, native grass and wildflowers were planted to control erosion along stream banks near a culvert, Wellman said.

The movement has detractors. Critics say Grow Native! promoters at the Missouri Department of Conservation are meddling in the private marketplace. Instead of increasing demand for the plants through promotion and education, they charge, organizers of the program have been too involved in developing the supply side of the market.

Although the market is still unproven, the promise of prairie restoration, as well as the chance to make extra money, is too good for some Missourians to pass up.

"In some places the grass is as tall as you are on a horse," said Steve Young, a former Department of Conservation official who is growing an 87-acre prairie on his century-old Kirksville farm. He said few experiences compare to standing in the middle of such a field on a warm, windy afternoon.

"It sounds like the ocean," he mused. "You can just imagine" Missouri's first settlers "lying there and listening to that sound."

Up until now, the growth of the native-plant industry has coincided with the growth in rural development and environmental mitigation projects. Since the early '90s, developers have had to consult with bioengineers to design safeguards against the erosion of streams, riverbanks and other environmentally sensitive areas.

"Fifteen years ago," such restrictions "wouldn't have been considered as critical," said David Flick, owner of Terra Technologies, an environmental consulting firm with offices in St. Louis and Kansas City. "We would have taken out streams, trees and plants without any thought about their effect on air quality or water quality."

Native plants, which include trees, shrubs, flowers, and grasses, provide engineers the perfect tool to mitigate stormwater erosion along culverts and stream banks. Their roots, which can reach 15 feet deep, hold soils together better than other plants, Flick said.

Public awareness about the plants likely grew with the appearance of wildflowers on roadsides, said Stacy Armstrong, roadside management supervisor for the Missouri Department of Transportation. Since approval of the Highway Beautification Act of 1965, more states have been planting wildflowers and other native plants, she said.

The plants' vitality and beauty also make them attractive alternatives to fescue, the care of which accounts for much of the highway department's $20 million annual roadside maintenance budget, she said. "There's a lot of people out there that would prefer that we never, ever plant fescue again."

Grow Native! emerged three years ago to expand the scope of the native-plant market.

Using a host of strategies that include product marketing and business development, the program has begun generating a demand for native plants among average homeowners and landscapers. Its catchy logo with the picture of a humming bird and dogwood flower can now be found on T-shirts, bags, and baseball caps. The program's Web site, www.grownative.com, receives an average of more than 100,000 hits a month.

A crucial hurdle for the program is to distinguish Missouri native plants and seeds from plants produced in other states through a specification and tagging system. Flick estimated more than 40 percent of native plants used for large landscaping projects in Missouri come from states such as California and Oregon, where huge horticultural industries sell native seeds at lower prices.

If Grow Native! can distinguish Missouri "ecotypes" from the plants and seeds of other states, Missouri growers can ensure that profits from the local native plant industry stay in Missouri. The ecotype program also provides consumers with a better plant, because Missouri natives survive better in Missouri soil than plants from elsewhere, Flick said.

Proponents of Grow Native!, however, remain cautious about over-inflating expectations. There is no fail-safe formula for growing native plants, and retail demand for the plants remains restrictively low. "Right now the demand does not exist to support all the suppliers," Allmon, of Grow Native!, said. "Saying that, we tell growers that 'your piece of the pie will get bigger once the pie gets bigger."'