Philip Latasa (background) and Matt Craig begin spring by sowing thousands of seeds at an off-site hoop-house in Catlett, Virginia. Thanks to this extra space, we are able to start a huge quantity of seedlings. (March 2010)

A big spring chore: Leveling out the oldest section of our container yard, an area scheduled for renovation in 2010. A crew from the Fairfax County Park Authority brings out some fancy equipment—and makes quick work of the task! They get lots of help from our hardworking regular volunteers. (March 2010)

To prepare for the growing season, volunteers remove mulch from the stock, being careful not to damage the seedlings. The mulch protected the seedlings during the harsh winter months. (March 2010)

The nursery has been “de-winterized,” so it’s time to prepare for transplanting and more sowing. Dozens of volunteers come out to fill pots. (March 2010)

Reconfiguration of the old container-yard section is well underway. Volunteers organize all the pots into tidy rows, leaving space for aisles. Thanks to our many gardening supporters, we have a large variety of containers to use, in addition to the specialized ones that we buy. Pot diversity to match our species diversity! (March 2010)

The old container yard is beginning to come together. All those rows of pots will be sown with herbaceous (nonwoody) meadow species, in preparation for our expanding meadow restoration effort. On the right, Rodney Olsen, our colleague from the Arlington Regional Master Naturalists, stabilizes the pot rows with a little mulch. (March 2010)

Some of our stock is field-grown, rather than container-grown. Here, volunteers are preparing a set of raised beds, where we grow native grasses. (March 2010)

Chris installs sprinkler trunk-line down one of the growing troughs in the newer section of the container yard. Over the last year or so, we have been working almost constantly on improvements to the watering system—or at least that’s the way it seems! There always seems to be another improvement to make. (April 2010)

Philip (on right) and Rusty, one of our spring interns, lay concrete blocks for the last of the growing troughs in this newest section of the container yard. Unlike the other troughs, this one will be used a propagation bed. (April 2010)

Volunteers begin reorganizing stock to take advantage of the recently constructed growing troughs. Some of our spaces have been in production and under construction at the same time! We’re looking forward to a more settled regimen. (April 2010)

Elizabeth and Scott, one of our volunteers from St. John’s Community Services, water the old section of the container yard, now dedicated to meadow species. Some of the grasses sowed earlier this spring are already up! (May 2010)

Here’s one of our recent acquisitions: Native field thistle (Cirsium discolor), an ecologically important (and no longer very common) denizen of local meadow. Many native butterflies, bees, and other insects feed on field thistle, when they can find it. (May 2010)

Our spring wildflower sale was a big success! We are very grateful to the Thurman family for the use of their yard to showcase our plants. (The Thurmans live near the nursery.) All of the sale proceeds went towards our stream buffer restoration program. (May 2010)

An entire trough filled with flats. They may not look like much, but almost all of these flats are filled with hundreds of sprouting (or soon-to-sprout) seedlings that will need to be transplanted by the end of the year. You can see why volunteers are the key to our operation! (May 2010)

A pleasant variety of native plants. Sensitive fern and Christmas fern, both common forest understory plants, behind some red mulberry, an uncommon native tree in our region (not to be confused with invasive alien white mulberry). There are lots of small-quantity accessions in our container yard, as well as some large accessions. (June 2010)

In 2010 we started growing emergent species—aquatic plants whose vegetation “emerges” from the water. Among our new accessions: pickerel weed, arrow arum, duck potato, and American lotus. Emergent stock will help us restore wetland. We can create emergent habitat just by closing the valves in our growing troughs. The neighborhood kids like this trough because there are lots of frogs in it. (July 2010)

Volunteers lay gravel in the aisles between troughs. We decided to put gravel down because the container yard doesn’t drain very well, and by mid-summer we found ourselves working in several inches of mud. Really wet, slippery mud—which made it very difficult to move heavy things around. The gravel has greatly improved things. (August 2010)

Lisa inspects the plants for hungry insects. We don’t use pesticides at our nursery—and indeed there are some “pests” we welcome (see the next slide)—but there are some infestations that we have to control to some degree. We just do this manually, and by adjusting our watering. (August 2010)

An example of a welcome insect—a Monarch butterfly caterpillar. It’s dining on a common milkweed—an important host plant for Monarchs. The plant provides the caterpillar with a chemical that is poisonous to birds and other predators. One of the reasons that we grow milkweed species is to help conserve our native butterflies. (August 2010)

Our new watering system in action. Thanks to Matt Bright, who spent part of his summer installing all those sprinklers, our days of dragging heavy hoses up and down the growing-trough aisles are now behind us! The new system leaves us free to focus on other tasks—like all that transplanting. (September 2010)

The reconfigured meadow-species section of the container yard, as it nears the end of its first growing season. It’s still a work in progress, but it has come a long way from the rough, muddy patch that it was at the beginning of March. (September 2010)

There are still spaces at the nursery that must be hand-watered, but we are working to extend our sprinkler system to as many of them as possible. In the meantime, we’re fortunate to have so many patient waterers! Here one of our St. John’s volunteers takes a turn with the hoses. (September 2010)

Our fall plant sale—the second plant sale of the year—gets underway with the help of volunteers from the Arlington Regional Master Naturalists, George Mason University, Lake Braddock Secondary School, and our usual assortment of weathered veterans. (October 2010)

The Indian grass, little bluestem and other native grasses await removal or have already been cut and taken out to the field. The beds are being cleaned and prepared for another bout of planting. (October 2010)

As the field work slows, and more and more seed is collected, we settle in for some serious seed-cleaning. Well, serious in terms of processed bulk. Plenty of levity in the process itself! Here, volunteers are cleaning grass seed. (November 2010)

Nikki (foreground) and Arlington Regional Master Naturalists take advantage of the mild fall to continue transplanting—even into late November! (November 2010)

During the winter we also do some propagation indoors, where we focus on species that cannot be easily handled at the nursery. Here you can see a couple of flats of bracken fern prothalli (the fern life phase that sprouts from spores). Bracken is very tough once established; we’re hoping that it will help us displace some of the invasive alien plants that we’re struggling with. (December 2010)