Jennifer Bargar, owner of Nature’s Haven, has lived on her Camas property for over 20 years and was inspired by Doug Tallamy’s book, “Nature’s Best Hope” to start her habitat restoration project, which has now led into a thriving nursery providing a wide variety for native plant gardeners.
The native plant nursery offers dozens of species, many of which are hard to find in other nurseries that carry indigenous plants. From full shade to full sun, ground cover to full trees, Nature’s Haven has something for everyone in the native plant enthusiast community.
Bargar will celebrate the first anniversary of Nature’s Haven opening to the public on Saturday, April 26, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., with 15 percent off everything inthe store and a free plant for everyone. The Earth Day Society will be in attendance, and a few artists, she said.
During the anniversary celebration, visitors will be able to walk around her property and see the plants they can buy growing in a natural environment and in demonstration gardens.
In a year’s time, Bargar said the most fun part has been working with high school student green teams such as Washougal High School as they will work to turn their courtyard into a native plant habitat. She also aspires to start a lending library with the book that inspired her.
“I want to start a lending library probably in conjunction with the Earth Day Society where we will have a set of books like Nature’s Best Hope from Doug Tallamy, but when we have situations when teachers are assigning readings, if they want to assign that, I’ll have the books that I can then lend to them,” she said. “And then when they’re done, I’ll have them back to maybe look for another school.”
Bargar was motivated by the book she wishes to distribute. She said the motivation was obvious yet so fundamental in the path to converting her sprawling property into strictly native plants.
“Butterflies, they need native plants to reproduce,” she said. “So the first 100 plants that I brought in for inventory were the top host plants in the area.”
Bargar utilized the National Wildlife Federation’s native plant finder at nativeplantfinder.nwf.org/plants and set her location with the local zip code to find out what plants were best to utilize in Clark County.
“So that’s where I started, and since then I learned more about host plants, or there are certain plants that are only host plants for a species of bee or butterflies like Violauna, the purple violet, so started bringing in some of those because the more diversity you have in plants, the more diversity in wildlife,” Bargar said.
Bargar has brought in plants from wholesale vendors to keep her nursery in stock, but she said she and her team will be expanding and learning to propagate and grow their plants at the nursery.
To learn more about Nature’s Haven and to shop online, visit natureshaven.earth.
