Our Nursery starts at our roots...
New Leaf Native Plant Nursery was founded by owner, Chris Oesterling, in 2016 while Chris was studying Environmental Science at Eastern Michigan University. The classes he took on plant identification and habitat restoration started his ongoing passion for native plants. Already an avid outdoor enthusiast and gardener, along with an overwhelming lack of locally grown natives, the decision to open a native plant nursery was born.
After six seasons growing on our quarter acre property, New Leaf Natives expanded to our fifty-five acre property in Manchester, MI. Over the winter of 2022 we successfully installed our first 3,000 sqft, heated growing space and reserved roughly 8,000 sqft of outdoor space!
Over the past few years, New Leaf Natives nursery has continued to expand and grow in exciting ways. We finished construction on our pole barn, started shipping our plants directly to your door, installed nursery trial gardens, sowed 7 acres of native seed, and expanded our outdoor growing areas. While making improvements to our new facilities, we continuously strive to improve our growing practices and add new species to our product line up.
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Since opening, we have propagated over 400 different species of plants, trees and shrubs native to the Midwest and continue to add new ones every year. The majority of our plants are grown from seed while some of the rarer, more difficult, species may be asexually propagated through cuttings. We rely on a combination of hand collection and sourced seed from providers in our eco-region to produce our plant material. Our plants are grown and sold in fully rooted plugs, as we find it to be the most economical and space-efficient way to serve our customers, although, we will, occasionally offer perennials and woody material in larger containers.
Over the years we have expanded our growing space and production numbers to offer wholesale pricing to qualified customers. Our current clients include, but are not limited to home gardeners, landscapers, contractors, nurseries, and environmental organizations. During our time operating the nursery, we have been encouraged by the continuously increased interest in native plants and are grateful for the opportunity to be a part of the movement. Our goal is to facilitate the increase in natural habitat and biodiversity by providing the highest quality plant material possible.
We have continued to make big progress but there is more to come...
The goal of our expansion is to increase production that will better serve our wholesale customer’s large project demands and to offer a higher standard of services, such as contract growing. With increased production, we will offer much higher inventories of single species trays and one gallon and larger sized trees and shrubs.
As we continue to develop the property, we look forward to executing projects such as additional heated growing areas, shade houses, woodland management of our 15-acre forest, and our multi-acre prairie reconstruction that will provide habitat for wildlife and serve as a seed bank for plant production.
