Fourth Corner Nurseries was established in 1982 and is located in the coastal lowlands of Whatcom County, Washington. We are a wholesale grower of native plants with 60 acres under production.

The first natives we produced were those that had a prior market in the ornamental trade such as red flowering currant (Ribes sanguineum) and vine maple (Acer circinatum). In the succeeding years, the demand for native plants in wetlands mitigation and restoration has expanded, and to serve this market we have begun to grow other species of native deciduous trees and shrubs. Selected species are mainly from seed collected in Washington mid-elevation sites, eastern Washington, western Oregon, western Montana and northern Idaho.

As our species list and acreage available for native plant production has expanded we have continued to look into other kinds of native plants that would fit into our system of plant propagation. Over the past 14 years we have perfected our own techniques to reliably field propagate native deciduous trees and shrubs. In addition to our field propagation we also have begun offering a selection of coniferous seedlings grown in plugs.

East half of Fourth Corner Nurseries

Due to our large selection of species from different habitats we have had to collect our own seed.

The advantage of doing our own seed collecting has been to acquire considerable information about the distribution and fruiting patterns of native plants throughout their natural range. Thus, over the years we have developed the special skill and expertise required to carry out site-specific seed collecting assignments. All of our seed collections are indexed as to location and referenced to geopositioning satellite way points that we have established throughout our collecting zones. We take care to index all our seed sources, and are currently growing plants on contract from specific seed collections. Due to our concerns for protecting the genetic diversity of the plants we grow, we have adopted US Forest Service standards for all collected seed. It is possible for example to obtain seed for an entire crop of ninebark, Physocarpus capitatus, from a single specimen plant. To do this, however, would provide the buyer with a very limited sample of the actual genetic diversity available from this species. Our approach is to collect seed from many different specimens and populations within each specific region. It is our belief that bare-root native plants produced in this manner have the best vigor and survival rates.

We supply native plants from comprehensive seed zones representing elevation bands from the north slope of the Oregon/California Siskyous range to British Columbia, and east to northern Idaho and central Montana. In addition we have collected in areas as far east as the Black Hills of South Dakota and south to the Grand Canyon.

It is known that over time with genetic isolation, selective environmental pressures fix the normal mutations and variations represented in the DNA of each species. Botanists and ecologists refer to differences within the species as ecotypes and varieties. Growers recognize that certain seed sources thrive under their naturally adapted growing conditions.

A designer who specifies for example Salix scouleriana in a Sand Point, Idaho restoration project might be using S. s. variety scouleriana, a plant which is a medium-sized tree and adapted to the mild climates of the western cascades. Another variety of scouler willow, S. s. var. coetana would be better adapted because it occurs in Western Washington in dry sites and also in the drier and colder eastern provinces and has a scrubby growth habit. Very often the coastal and interior strains are recognized as separate varieties. Also, over the years we have been working with native plants, we have noticed variations between strains of native plants that are consistent with distribution. Sometimes these differences are very subtle and noticed only by the seed collector or the grower when they are put side by side with the same species from different sources.

For example, when we planted seed collections of Sambucus racemosa (red elderberry) from Western Washington from near sea level and from around 5000 feet we noticed that the timing of seedling emergence and the growth rate of plants reflected the apparent habitat of the parent plants. These differences tended to disappear in the seed bed by the end of the first growing season but nonetheless represent an inherited adaptive feature. We have also noted differences between strains of other species in disease resistance and frost hardiness.