Chances are, if you have found us, you are at least aware of the concept of “native gardening”, and are at least mildly interested in doing so yourself. Thank you for that. But that then begs the questions, “What does ‘native’ mean, anyway?”
There is some debate on the topic, but the simplest and truest answer is probably this: if naturally-occurring (and not naturalized) populations of a plant can be found by walking a few miles in any direction from your garden, then it is definitely native to your area. From there on, the definition becomes more varied depending largely on what native gardening means to you in the first place.
If, like us, you are an ardent conservationist deeply opposed to the practice of essentially ignoring a plant’s likelihood of “jumping the fence” and strongly supportive of planting local ecotypes, chances are pretty good you’ll take a narrow view of nativity, limited to species found naturally within a relatively small distance.
If you are in the marketing department at a national corporation like Lowe’s or Home Depot, you’ll probably slap the word “native” on ANY plant found naturally in the Lower 48, their cultivars, and most of their hybrids. Most people fall somewhere in between, and even companies that care deeply about the environment tend to hew closer to the broad definition of nativity than the narrow one.
At RVA Homegrown Natives, our mission is, first and foremost, to do the best we can to preserve species diversity, with a strong focus on local (RVA) and Virginia native species, but with allowances made for more broadly native species that are clearly labeled as such.
We absolutely DO NOT cultivate or carry cultivars or hybrids of garden origin, as we do not consider them to be native and indeed consider them strongly counterproductive to our goal of preserving natural diversity, though naturally-occurring forms and hybrids are fair game.
In the end, however, we also do not wish to arbitrarily place limits on growing native species just because they are not local. There are many wonderful and fascinating plants found in the Lower 48, many of which are NEARLY Virginia native, and many are personal favorites that could use more visibility and availability in the garden trade. That said, we will endeavor to keep to a minimum species that are more loosely “native” to those of us in the RVA, especially those which are common, adventive in nature, and/or have sister species that occur more locally.
Below are our definitions for the levels of nativity you will find on our site. Unless noted, our primary source is the USDA Plants site, though other relevant sites are consulted frequently.
Strictly speaking, perhaps, this would include only the City of Richmond and the two counties that have zip codes that are essentially part of Richmond, Henrico and Chesterfield.
We also include Hanover in the strict definition, as it essentially borders areas of Henrico that have been co-opted by Richmond. For our purposes, however, RVA Native (which can alternately be called Local Native) also includes New Kent, Charles City, Prince George, Dinwiddie, Amelia, Powhatan and Goochland Counties and the Cities of Hopewell, Colonial Heights and Petersburg — basically, the counties and cities separated by no more than one county from the City of Richmond.
For those who may wonder at this, the main idea is that many species are known from one or more of these counties but have never been recorded from the RVA itself, whereas the likelihood that they once existed there is pretty high. Also, this area is climatically pretty similar overall, and most of these plants can be grown most anywhere in the area given the proper siting. There are, of course, exceptions, but this seems like a good starting point to us. Our STRONG emphasis as a company is on plants native to this region.
This would seem to be pretty cut-and-dry, these plants native to the state of Virginia. However, some plants are debatably native to the state, and if we carry them at all we tend to call them Eastern Native. Our source for this is the Flora of Virginia, by Weakly, Ludwig and Townsend, with the online Flora as a backup.
Our secondary emphasis as a company is on Virginia native plants and those of adjacent states (primarily North Carolina and Tennessess).
This designation could be a bit tricky. Many would say this covers species native east of the Mississippi River, and if so more power to you. However, it’s really hard to say exactly where one would then need to draw the line in northern Minnesota.
Also, we have always counted Arkansas and Louisiana as part of the Southeast, and Iowa and Minnesota as part of the Midwest (which one lays claim to Missouri is open to debate, but we think generally it could be called part of the Midwest). So, that line of states, to us, is part of the Eastern Native region.
This could also be called U.S. Native because, practically speaking, we are unlikely to be able to grow and offer species only U.S. native to the state of Alaska, and currently lack either the resources or the desire to make tropicals a part of our business, which cancels out Hawaii, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, etc.
That said, one can dream… In the meantime, the borders set pretty clearly by Canada in the north and Mexico to the south make up the de facto geographic limits of nativity for our company. We have little emphasis on Plains and Western Native species, but we do intend to produce and carry small numbers, with the possibility for more down the road.
