We hold a Native Plant Seed and Cutting Exchange every other month at the Peninsula Conservation Center in Palo Alto. This free event provides an opportunity to share and receive both seeds and cuttings of native plants. Browse the diverse offerings, ranging from easy-to-grow to hard-to-find, and go home with seeds and cuttings of new native plants! We will provide coin envelopes for seeds but bring containers to carry cuttings home.
If you have native plant material from your own garden to share, please bring some. Label your cuttings to make them easy to browse – some gardeners attach helpful hints about growing; others display photos of plants in bloom. You may find it convenient to use calscape.org for this – there is a link on each plant’s information page to make a printable sign for most native species and cultivars.
If you bring cuttings, keep them cool and moist in a bucket of water. Don’t have native plant material to share? No problem, as there is usually enough for all.
Check our calendar for the date of the next Exchange. This event is organized by the CNPS SCV Wildflower Ambassadors, and they are always there to answer questions and distribute free packets of prepackaged wildflower seeds.
Location: Peninsula Conservation Center, 3921 East Bayshore Road, Palo Alto, CA, 94303
Propagation Resources
- California Native Plant Propagation, a talk by Ann Finney: Learn about easy and effective propagation best practices for California native plants, both from cuttings as well as seeds. The talk includes show-and-tell demos.
- Propagating Native Plants at Home, a talk by Stanley Gu, This talk shares a methods used to propagate plants at the Grassroots Ecology nursery for their restoration projects as well as ways to adapt these techniques for your home. Includes great examples of home propagation setups. The recording is missing some sections of the talk. Slides available here.
- California Native Plant Propagation, an informative article on collecting and propagating native plants from seeds on cnps.org
- California Native Plant Propagation Calendar for San Mateo & San Francisco Counties, from San Mateo UC Master Gardeners
- Native Plant Propagation Methods: Cuttings, article from the from San Mateo UC Master Gardeners
- Seed Propagation of Native California Plants, Dara E. Emery, 2021. The most complete resource for the propagation of California native plants by seed. Available from the CNPS SCV online store.
- Propagation Protocol Database, from the USDA Forest Service. The Native Plant Network is devoted to the sharing of information on how to propagate native plants of North America (US, Canada, Mexico and the Pacific Islands). Excellent searchable database.
