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Native Plant Nursery in Southern Lake Champlain Valley

West Haven, VT—24 October 2002—Many nurseries raise hybridized and exotic ornamental plants and trees from all over the world. But there is a new nursery in the southern Lake Champlain region that’s foregone this kind of exotica and is instead growing common trees and shrubs found in the woods and along riverbanks nearby.

The Poultney-Mettowee Partnership Native Plant Nursery is propagating trees and shrubs from locally collected seeds for an ambitious riverbank and clayplain forest restoration project sponsored by The Nature Conservancy’s Southern Lake Champlain Valley Program and the Poultney-Mettowee Watershed Partnership. In a few years these seedlings will be big enough to plant out on riverbanks and floodplains owned by The Nature Conservancy and on local farms enrolled in a federally-funded streambank protection program called Partners for Wildlife. The goal of this restoration project is to mitigate the impacts of agricultural practices on water quality and to restore clayplain forests typical of the Lake Champlain area in the Poultney and Hubbardton river valleys.

The joint restoration effort will also expand the wildlife corridor along the rivers, lessen the impact of invasive species and stabilize riverbanks, decreasing the erosion and sedimentation that impacts native mussel and sand darter populations in the Poultney River.

Vermont’s clayplain forests were cleared 200 years ago. Today, clayplain forests survive on 14 % of the land in the Champlain Valley south of the Winooski River. The forest patches that remain are small (the median size is 7.2 acres) and disparate. Clayplain forests are now considered to be a rare natural community type in Vermont and New York State.

Heather Potter, the Director of the Southern Lake Champlain Valley program says, "The major limiting factor to restoration of the native clayplain and floodplain habitats has been lack of plant material generated from local genetic stock. We are convinced that because of the natural variability that occurs within any given species, and because trees used in restoration must be as hardy as possible, our restoration efforts will be most successful if we utilize plant material that is most adapted for survival in our local area."

Murray McHugh manages the native plant nursery located on Conservancy land in Whitehall, N.Y. He propagated 8,000 tree and shrub seedlings this summer from seed collected by local volunteers. These trees and plants, typical of the riverbanks and clayplain forests in the area, include white, bur, red and swamp white oaks; silver and red maple; cottonwood, willow and red twig dogwood. Start-up costs for the nursery were covered by federal funds channeled through a partnership between the Poultney-Mettowee Watershed Partnership and the Conservancy’s Southern Lake Champlain Valley Program.

The Nature Conservancy owns 8,400 acres in West Haven and Benson, Vermont and Whitehall, New York. Three chapters of The Nature Conservancy, the Adirondack Chapter, the Eastern New York Chapter and The Nature Conservancy of Vermont have collaborated to protect critical habitats in both states, including seven miles of river frontage along the Poultney River, the deep emergent wetlands of Lake Champlain, East Creek, Shaw Mountain, the Saddles Mountain and part of the southernmost, riverine end of Lake Champlain. The three chapters also support a site-based conservation program office in West Haven. Five employees manage the land and advance conservation goals for the area.

The Poultney-Mettowee Watershed Partnership is focused on the interstate watersheds of the Poultney and Mettowee Rivers and is itself a partnership between two state soil conservation districts in New York and Vermont. The Poultney and Mettowee watersheds are located in northern Bennington and western Rutland Counties of Vermont and in northeastern Washington County, New York.