East Cascades Native Plant Hub

The East Cascades Native Plant Hub is a unique educational partnership between Oregon State University – Cascades Campus, the National Park Service, and WinterCreek Nursery – a native plant propagation nursery recently purchased by the Worthy Garden Club, a 501(c)(3) non-profit.  Our mission is to educate the next generation of conservation practitioners through providing opportunities to complete every stage of ecological restoration, from seed collection and cleaning, to propagating site specific genotypes and completing on-the-ground restoration of native plant communities in a variety of ecoregions across the western U.S.  Four specific objectives were identified during development of the partnership: Climate change adaptation, pre-fire fuels management, post-fire recovery, and rare species conservation and recovery.

The Hub is centered at OSU’s HERS Lab (Human and Ecosystem Resiliency and Sustainability) and serves as the center for the storage and dissemination of information, plant material, and labor.  This unique partnership provides a model for a centralized regional approach to conservation of native plant communities throughout the west.  The partnership was developed in mid-2022. Early efforts focus on National Park Service properties located in sagebrush-steppe ecosystems, with plans to expand support to additional interested partners including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, and the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs.