About our sale
Happy Plant Sale customers with their plants
Learn more about our sale, why it is geared toward smaller-scale, residential garden and landscape projects, and find resources to help you find even more local native plants.
Why we do it:
The goal of our annual Native Plant Sale is to provide easy access to beautiful and affordable bare-root native trees and shrubs that are good for people, water and wildlife. EMSWCD's mission is to help people care for land and water. This sale is one small way that we work to fulfill our mission each year.
How it works:
In the spring and summer, we decide on the plant list and place wholesale orders with local nurseries. Depending on species availability, the final order usually comes to about 12,000 - 14,000 plants. We spend the next several months on logistics, planning, and online store development. In January, we open the online sale for ordering. The plants get delivered to us about a week before the pick-up day, and in just 4-5 days our team sorts them into an average of 1,000 customer orders. It is really an amazing process!
Plant sale orders bundled up and ready for distribution
Quantities are limited. Here's why:
We are excited that the popularity of our sale has grown substantially over the years. The only downside to this is that plants sell out very quickly. We wish we could expand our sale to meet the demand, but as a small organization with space and storage limitations, we cannot order more plants because we are already at maximum capacity.
Every year, we order the maximum number of plants we can process and distribute within the limits of our event space, cold storage capacity, and staff capacity for order sorting. We wish we could do more, and appreciate your understanding.
Because this plant sale is for small projects and residential customers, we want to make sure as many people as possible can get plants. That is why we ask that customers order no more than 10 of any one species. If you need more, we can help you with that too.
Where can I get more plants?
There are several other seasonal bare-root sales, pop-up sales through the year, and local native plant nurseries. On our main website we maintain a list of Local sources of native plants. There you will find many other annual Native Plant Sales, as well as retail and wholesale nurseries carrying all the species we offer and more. If you need more information or have questions about a large-scale project, please contact Whitney Bailey at whitney@emswcd.org.
Why bare roots?
Our sale focuses exclusively on native bare-root trees and shrubs for several reasons. It allows us to offer the largest selection and quantity possible. Bare-root plants acclimate to new soil conditions easily and establish quickly. Finally, they are inexpensive, which means you can get more plants for less money! Learn more about the benefits of bare-root plants here.
Pick-up day details:
Plant pick-up will take place on Saturday, February 14 from 10:00 am - 3:00 pm. Due to permitting and space limitations, this is the only day that plants are available for pick-up. Please mark your calendar!
- Date: Saturday, February 14
- Time: 10:00 am - 3:00 pm
- Location: EMSWCD Office (in the parking lot behind the building)
- Address: 5211 N Williams Ave., Portland 97217