Community Nursery Collaboration

The Baltimore Woods has a new local ally tucked into Green Anchors, the eco-industrial park just north of Cathedral Park. What appears from the street to be a tumble of tiny houses, cranes, steel containers and quonsets, holds a hidden gem of riverfront gardens, buzzing beehives and a small nursery run by local nonprofit, Rewild Portland. Rewild Portland headquartered at Green Anchors in fall 2020, buying a 30 x 95 ft high tunnel greenhouse built on site in 2018 by landscape designer and artist Scott Sutton to grow plants for restoration of the former brownfield site on which Green Anchors sits.

Rewild Portland’s mission is to build community resilience through teaching place-based ancestral arts and skills. Partnering with Green Anchors, the organization can now further this mission by growing craft and medicine plants specific to the skills and classes they teach, as well as native plants for community partners like Friends of Baltimore Woods, and other restoration projects. In collaboration, Friends of Baltimore Woods has donated seed, native plant starts, nursery tools and equipment remaining from their earlier plant sale days. The Friends also donated $500 to to jumpstart the first round of wildflower plantings destined for spring planting in the oak savannah. These include Douglas Aster, fireweed, gumweed, blanketflower, prunella and goldenrod. Much of the seed is collected from the neighborhood by FOBW hands and locally adapted to our microclimate.

The ReWild nursery is currently rebuilding their large high tunnel greenhouse that collapsed in an ice storm in February 2021. It has been operating since then with smaller hoophouses, but will soon have a much increased capacity to continue rolling seasonal plantings for Baltimore Woods. Rewild Portland Nursery Director, Ivy Stovall, is a founding member of FOBW and a 20-year resident of St. Johns. As a long-time Baltimore Woods advocate and community organizer, Ivy is thrilled to be able to contribute to the restoration project by growing plants in close proximity to their destination and in close cooperation with the board and volunteers as they develop planting plans.

Community education and skillsharing is central to the nursery mission, which runs on volunteer power. All are welcome to come learn and share knowledge about plant propagation and gardening at weekly volunteer sessions led by Ivy at Green Anchors. Volunteer dates and sign ups can be found here. Stay tuned for announcements about special volunteer sessions devoted to Baltimore Woods and come be a part of this full-circle, local restoration effort—from seeding, to planting, to tending the neighborhood wilds.

You can check out Rewild Portland’s Community Nursery at their second annual Earth Day Weekend plant sale April 23rd and 24th, at Green Anchors, 8940 N. Bradford St. You can check out the project and take home native plants as well as plants for medicine, craft, dye, and eating.