Should You Start Native Plants by Seed or Buy Seedlings?

There’s one truth about native plant gardening that sometimes makes it seem daunting to novices: it can take quite a while to enjoy the fruits (or flowers) of your labor. But there are plenty of things you can do to make the process a smooth one, which this article will go over in detail.

First, native perennials can be slow to establish and some take several years to first bloom, often more slowly than many popular ornamentals. But your patience will be handsomely rewarded when you finally do see the first bursts of color and then enjoy the lower maintenance required for them to continue thrive year after year.

There are some tips to shorten your wait. For one, the timeline is significantly affected by the method with which you plant your natives: either from seed or as seedlings.

There is a trade-off between time and cost: planting from seed can save you a lot of money (or even be free if you can get them from a friend or local organization).

But this significantly adds time to your quest to see established plants. On the other hand, planting actual plants in the ground will get you to blooms much faster, but it can be expensive to fill your whole available space, and it can also be difficult to source all of the plants you are looking for.

Growing Native Plants from Seed: A Quick Guide to Buying, Timing, Preparing and Establishing

Many native plant seed sources have much simpler packaging than the major commercial seed companies you may be used to

Planting natives from seed is a great method for many reasons. We’ve already covered the cost aspect (a regular packet is usually just a few dollars and can give you many dozens of plants).

But you can also usually find a much wider selection available for easy purchase, both at local businesses and online. And planting from seed also helps with genetic diversity as opposed to seedlings that come from cuttings, which retain the DNA of their parents. (Many seedlings are grown from seed too, of course, but it’s something to look for.)

Many gardeners also consider it to be the most rewarding method of starting a garden: you plant seeds in the ground yourself and enjoy seeing the very first growth poke out of the ground; you steward it through every single stage of its growth up to its blooming later on. This also makes it a very sustainable method that also educates you even more about each plant.

There are some particular complexities to growing native plants from seed. Overall, there is a different seasonal rhythm to most traditional gardening which is centered on planting in spring, but with natives it is often better to plant in late fall.

Seeds for many native plants need to be cold stratified; that is, chilled for a period of time to simulate winter temperatures. In some cases moisture must be added as well.

This can be done artificially (like in your refrigerator) or you can direct sow them into the ground in the fall or winter, so they can go through these cycles naturally and be ready to germinate in spring.

Direct sowing like this is easy and effective but there are other nuances with the method that you’ll want to be aware of.

Challenges and Drawbacks of Planting Natives from Seed

We’ve already touched on some of the negatives of choosing to plant seeds, namely that it takes longer.

But also, if you plant seeds in the ground without any protection there is always a big risk that hungry or curious critters may dig them up.

And especially when dealing with a larger area you need to make sure you properly prepare it so your seeds don’t get overwhelmed by undesired nonnatives and invasives.

You want to thoroughly kill off all the existing vegetation before trying to plant native seeds, or else the weed pressure will be too great for them to survive. And this of course adds even more time to the equation, and even if you do prepare the site well, weed seeds will still get into the mix as well and it can be very difficult to identify which sprouts are your desired plants or the invasives.

But fortunately there are ways to still start from seed but in a much more stable environment.

This is a stiff goldenrod (solidago rigida) plant I grew from seed and transplanted. This photo was taken that fall, which illustrates how little visible growth there is in the first year while the plants work on their roots. The next spring, it emerged much bigger.

Winter Sowing for Controlled Seed Starting: Milk Jugs, Indoors, Pots and More

To combine some of the ideas we’ve just presented, a great method to consider is called winter sowing. This involves planting seeds in the late fall or winter (which takes care of the stratification needs) but in some type of container.

Some call this “milk jug sowing” because some gardeners like to use milk jugs, but you can use all sorts of different homemade or bought containers (just make sure there is a hole in the top and drainage holes in the bottom.)

This way you protect your seeds from wildlife, reduce weed competition, and when they get big enough the next spring you can transplant them to your garden. Some gardeners also like to start their seeds indoors and this can be a great method too, but of course adds a bit more labor in terms of watering and then hardening them off outside before transplanting so they don’t get shocked.

At this point it’s useful to cover one other choice you have when planting natives from seed.

I often sow native seeds into containers in the late winter or spring, let them grow for the year, and then transplant them into the ground in the fall. The timeline helps them grow well as I can move the containers into some shade during the worst summer heat, and the fall planting helps them establish during the cooler months before going dormant for winter.

Individual Species Seed vs. Seed Mixes for Native Plants

In general there are two main options for growing native plants from seed: planting individual species or using a seed mix that contains many species together.

You’ll typically use a seed mix if you have a larger area and are going for a naturalized or more “wild” looking garden.

If you buy a seed mix, make sure that the plants in it are native to your area. Many generic “wildflower mixes” are filled with exotics from across the world and some even include invasive plants.

Individual species are good for smaller spaces and whenever you want to control what ends up where (for height, spread, and other considerations).

Some of the native plants I’ve found easiest to grow from seed include purple coneflower (echinacea purpurea), coreopsis spp. (lanceleaf, tall), milkweed (asclepias spp.), oxeye sunflower (heliopsis helianthoides), and purple prairie clover (dalea purpurea).

Combining Native Annuals with Seed Plantings for Faster Blooms

One more great method when choosing to seed your native plants is to add in some annuals which will give you a splash of color in the first year when the perennials are just getting established, but will fade into the background when they grow and start to take over.

Black-eyed susan (rudbeckia hirta) is a great choice that I’ve used quite a bit. Other annuals you can consider include gallardia spp. (blanket flower), partridge pea (chamaecrista fasciculata), and bidens (beggartick), american bellflower (campanula americana).

Growing Native Plants from Seedlings

We’ve covered quite a few methods for planting from seed, and as you’ve seen they do involve some additional labor. Choosing plant seedlings requires less work and time but of course will be more expensive. One of your main choices is what size of plants to buy.

Plugs refer to the youngest seedlings that are grown in small pots that take up one cell in a larger tray. (There isn’t one standard “plug” size as the size of the trays used varies, but they are usually in the range of 5″ deep and 2″ wide).

You will see many plug containers that are deeper than they are wide, which helps with native plants specifically because they spend so much of their first year energy on their roots and this lets them grow deep and healthy without becoming pot bound. And for you the gardener, your benefit is that they are the cheapest seedlings you’ll find on sale, often around $5 at many native plant nurseries.

Quarts and gallons are typically the larger sizes of pots that you will find.

Regular vs. Bare Root Seedlings

One alternative to the normal seedlings that come in pots are “bare roots.” This means that the plants were carefully taken out and stored dormant without any soil covering their roots.

They certainly don’t look like much when you receive them, but they burst back to life when the time is right. Because they are older than plugs and other small seedlings, they will typically reach maturity and flowering age sooner.

And with native trees and shrubs specifically, bare roots can actually grow more vigorously after planting because they don’t have as much transplant shock going from the soil into a container into that soil in your garden.

All in all, bare roots are easier to ship and thus are widely available online. And they usually can be found for cheaper prices than other seedlings.

Overall, there are a few other things you do want to consider when seedling shopping. You can buy natives from a wide variety of places, from big box stores to backyard nurseries, but it’s important not only to verify that plants are native to your area, but another consideration is if they are cultivars or straight species (the former are sometimes altered in ways that make them less ecologically beneficial). Larger mainstream garden centers may only have cultivars, which aren’t bad across the board by any stretch, but you should look into particular species to see how they have been changed from the straight species.

And finally, locally grown plants are also a better choice both for their sustainability but also their ecotype that will be best suited to your local environment. There are plenty of online marketplaces where you can find seedlings from a wide variety of species, but look carefully to see where those plants have been grown. (A few online native nurseries actually have a few different locations they grow and ship from depending on where you live.)

The Final Word: Making the Seed vs. Seedling Decision

I believe the decision of planting native seed vs. seedlings comes down to the size of the area you are planting and your budget.

My favorite way to do it is winter sowing, which I see basically as a way to grow my own seedlings and then control exactly where I put them (for considerations of height, spread, color and contrast, etc.).

This obviously helps keep my costs down, but it doesn’t really add much labor at all, since they naturally get everything they need over the winter and emerge when they’re ready the next spring. I have found that if I plant them in regular pots with no covering on top, they tend to get dug up at some point by squirrels, chipmunks or rabbits.

If I were rewilding a larger area than my modest garden beds, then I’d look for a seed mix from a reputable native plant nursery (and always double-check the plants included by their botanical name), and spend one year preparing the site with some form of sheet mulching to reduce the need for tilling and digging.

And if your time is limited and you go the other direction and decide to buy seedlings, I recommend buying at least a couple of seed packets and exploring and enjoying the process of starting them, whether it be in milk jugs over the winter or sprinkling some annuals in between your young perennials to help fill up some of the space.