In Missoula, DNRC grows a million native plants

Jordan Hansen

(Daily Montanan) In Missoula’s Orchard Homes neighborhood, the state is growing hundreds of thousands of native plants, trees, and shrubs in small greenhouses and fields dotting an 80-acre parcel in a program that will become a centenarian next year.

Demand is increasing across the state, staff say, for the Montana Department of Natural Resource and Conservation’s nursery, which grows plants for fire recovery, erosion control, and wildlife and pollinator habitat. The Conservation Seedling Nursery grows about 70 different species of plants native to Montana every year, an area staff are hopeful to expand as private and public demand increases.

State agencies, including Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, also use the trees for projects, including shade and habitat restoration around fishing access sites. Shade is important for keeping temperatures in rivers cool, which has become critical as dropping water levels continue to be a cause for concern in rivers across the state.

Conservation districts and private landowners utilize the state nursery as well. And as demand also grows nationally for plants native to their own habitat, Montana is no exception.

The state has an annual seedlings sale, which ended in late May. The facility produces more than one million seedlings per year, and DNRC staff in the program say they’d love to expand the nursery further — they stocked nearly 900,000 seedlings in 2026. Most of those seedlings are ponderosa pines.

“Not even just locally, but like throughout the United States, people understand that we need more plants, we need more seeds, and people increasing our infrastructure, so that way we can grow more plants,” said nursery program director Marissa Zaricor.

A greenhouse addition finished in 2024, built with federal funds, is helping, staff said, and the nursery increased its customers by 400 over last year. That’s important for a self-sufficient state program not drawing from the general fund or tax revenues. It funds itself.

Plant sales are open to the public, though in a limited capacity — an agreement has to be filled out before they can be purchased and there are order minimums.

The trees and plants are meant to be used for conservation efforts, not ornamental landscaping projects, and end up in every county in the state.

“We used to ask for maps and site plans,” said Ben Jones, who runs much of the production side of the work for DNRC. “… We have order minimums to help ensure that people aren’t just wanting two of these for their yard.”

The DNRC even has an employee who spends much of April on the road delivering plants across the state, agency staff said.

Trees are snapped up quickly, with some species selling out in days after the sale begins annually in January, agency staff said.

Last year was a bumper seed crop, agency staff said, and the seeds are collected from the wild. There are some plants around the DNRC’s facility where some seeds are harvested, but organizations and groups across the state also bring them in to be processed.

On Tuesday, Kylie Brown, the native seed program coordinator, was harvesting some Idaho Fescue, a perennial bunchgrass. Using a lawn barrel and some scissors, she carefully cut bunches of stems and seeds from the plants and put them in the container. She was also testing the seeds to see if they were ripe or not — some seeds ripen after they are cut, she explained, but they have to be taken at the right time.

“Just kind of a cool technique, just to ensure that we’re getting as much ripe seed as we can for our seed sales,” Brown said.

Seed gathering is an area where DNRC can always use help, they said, and interested parties should reach out to them. The state then tests the seed’s germination rate (the percentage of seeds successfully growing into seedlings within a certain timeframe) and can adjust how much seed they need to put in to get at least one plant to grow. If excess plants sprout, they are manually pulled out, sometimes with tweezers.

Other plants start from cuttings dipped in growth hormones, which are then carefully placed in a greenhouse via forklift. Deer are a problem in the outdoor plots, and while some are fenced, the facility itself isn’t. And in an effort to keep deer away, pigs’ blood is used around outdoor growing areas.

Freezers are also important, because they allow for plants to be in a dormant state over the winter and are used for seed storage, as well.

One problem people have when they get their seedlings out of the freezer in January is that they immediately put the plant into a freezer at home, killing it. The state freezers are set at 28 degrees, while home freezers are usually colder.

“The home freezer is at zero, and the roots die,” Jones said. “So very specific temperature control in our freezers.”

The science of growing them has a lot to do with work by Jones, who has been with DNRC since 2008. Much has changed in that time, including how the nursery no longer grows trees in fields, which was a laborious process.

“It was no longer cost effective, and survivability was way better with containerized greenhouse seedlings, so we’ve shifted entirely to greenhouse production,” Jones said.

Soil mixtures are an art, focusing on nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium and water intake. As the science changes, so do they, with survivability of the plants a focus.

“There’s lots we’re learning every day,” Zaricor said.