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Welcome to the native seed nursery.
This is where we produce seed for restoration projects across the district.
(Music) So we have some volunteers out here today, collecting seed, which is one of our main Fall activity.
The volunteers participate in every aspect of the nursery.
We start out with green house propagation in the spring. Then we plant those plants into the nursery beds.
We weed, we mulch, we woodchip our walking path, and we do seed collecting, and we also do seed cleaning.
(Music) We have volunteers that come back regularly.
Some of them come out for an afternoon just to get a chance to be outside and learn about native plants.
You know, some of these plants even how you can take them home in your own garden
Some of these guys are stewards, meaning that they help maintain a specific portion of preserves that the district manages
and they kind of take the lead on that.
Leading their own volunteer crews out there, doing a lot of the restoration work, um and some of them still want to come out and volunteer for the nursery as well.
This is Ed and he is also a site steward at Rollins.
So he does a lot of restoration work and has a lot of his own knowledge about native plants,
about what kinds of things need to be done to preserve them and maintain the populations we have.
Ed: There is so much to be learned out here
I didn't know I was a city kid when I started doing this about eight years ago
and now I am beginning to learn by following the more knowledgeable volunteers around.
Learning from them and learning from people like Kelly you really pick up a lot about what the environment and nature is all about.
(Music) Kelly: Tim, what first attracted you to the nursery?
Tim: Well I was getting close to retirement and I like being outside.
I thought it would be an enjoyable experience and it has been.
I like very much having a free education, free classroom where you are out and able to -learn to-identify the various plants in the prairie eco systems,
understand how they interact together and it has been very very educational. Also very enjoyable group of people.
The volunteers that I have worked with, every single one of them have been peachy as far as the personalities, as far as the intellect
a lot of retired professionals and also people from all walks of life seem to find this process interesting
and I got to say it has been a real pleasure to working with the high school kids
I'd say I have been surprised at how hard and energetic knowledgeable they turn out to be as far what they are doing and how they are doing it.
Kelly: So you guys are going to be collecting prairie drop seed grass
um here's what the seeds look like this is one of our high quality prairie grasses
and you will notice the smell of buttered popcorn that is from this grass. Pretty cool
and its all kind of mixed in here in this bed
All you have to do is, walk up to plant you want to look for, one that actually like this one.
You can see the difference between this one and this one
this is not yet fruited this has and all you do is strip it off the stem like that. Pretty simple.
Somebody in the background: You do it with your bear hands? Kelly: Do it with bare hands. Very soft
So here we have Natalie. She started out with our Youth Conservation Corps which is our some of our paid summer staff and she came back as a volunteer.
Natalie: I love being outdoors and I love doing things for the environment so this something I can do fairly easily and right down the road from where I live.
Kelly: So this is Sam she is also another veteran volunteer out here she actually was part of the Youth Conservation Corp
and is also coming back to do some volunteer work.
Sam: I enjoy it because I know that everything I do here is going to make a difference even if it's small.
(Music) If you are interested in volunteering at the native seed nursery you can find all the information on the district web page,
click on the volunteer link and look for native seed nursery you'll see the information when we have our work days and how to contact me.