HERITAGE SEEDLINGS & LINERS, INC.

Hear more about Heritage Seedlings and Liners on OSU’s weekly podcast PolliNation.

Founded in the early 80s, Heritage Seedlings began by growing woody ornamental plants for wholesale trade. Japanese Maple, Birches, and Magnolias were just a few of the 700 different kinds of plants they grew. In 2001, they embarked on a new endeavor – growing native plants and wildflower seeds to aid in the restoration of habitats within the Willamette Valley.

Location

Salem, Oregon

Established in

1982

Owned by

Mark and Jolly Krautmann/ Lynda Boyer

WHAT ARE THEY DOING FOR BEES?

The owners and staff hope to inspire a sense of imaginative stewardship among other private landowners in the Willamette Valley. By protecting edge habitat and being intentional about using it to promote native pollinators and plants, landowners can help to connect the fragmented local habitats and demonstrate to other farms what is possible.

Walking their property, one can see bee nests dotting the ground and beneficial insects hard a work. Sweat bees, bumble bees, lacewings, ladybugs and more glide across plants like tarweed and yampah, milkweed and monkey flower. Their land is a testament to their commitment to walking the walk. “I feel as a grower that it’s our leadership imperative to show by our own example these possibilities for stewardship.”

meet the farmers

Owners Mark and Jolly Krautmann are well-known in the agriculture community for being dedicated stewards of natural resources on farms they own. In 2001, they hired botanist Lynda Boyer to manage the restoration of two of their farms. Lynda’s first move at Heritage was to determine what habitat type needed to be restored and where to find native materials for each of those habitat types. “What can we do here to sort of bring it back to life, because it had been so degraded?”

At the onset of the restoration projects, Lynda quickly discovered that there were few suppliers of native seeds to aid in the restoration of their prairie, oak, and wetland habitats. In addition, the diversity of native species was low, especially for upland prairie species. To meet this need, Heritage began the production of native plants and wildflower seeds, for both themselves and others working to restore Willamette Valley habitats. Today, they produce roughly 4,000 lbs. of native seed a year and have over 100 species in production on 40 acres.