Seeds for The Future - An Ethical and Sustainable Practice for Native Habitat

Stewardship of native plants and habitat seem to be at its highest support from the general public and the ecologically minded alike in recent memory. From hearings in Congress to TikTok infuencer pages, the message of “going native" is resonating and people are getting their hands dirty, but is it enough? The environmental and economic costs of the nursery industry, whether native or not, cannot be ignored - we must have a diverse approach in how we build native habitat. Mostly overlooked, and seldom fully appreciated as it trails behind the spectacle of the growing season, seeds of the native plants can hold significant value to how we access native flora and share its wonder with others. From curbing the carbon footprint tagged to every plug planted, to the banking of genetic lineages and adaptation of historic regional native landscapes, seeds offer us common sense strategies for making ecologically important landscapes -not just beautiful ones. Explore the nuances of native seed collections, its ethics and the process from shoot to seed and learn what it takes to do home-grown conservation.

Dylan Hackett is the founder and owner of The Rewilding Collective, a conservation oriented land management and consulting business, dedicated to ecological stewardship and progressive native habitat management of the regional southeast. Originally from Nashville, Tennessee, Dylan moved to Chattanooga in 2012 to attend the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, but now calls Chattanooga and Southern Appalachia his home. With an affinity for the systems and plant ecology of the Southeastern U.S., Dylan has explored conservation through his work doing native plant propagation and the building of robust native habitat. In 2022, The Rewilding Collective concept was developed and founded in response to the lack of progressive ecological restoration being practiced and served to the greater Chattanooga area. Since then, Dylan and his team at TRC have worked to restore private and public lands in the Southeast, introducing tens of thousands of native plants into the landscape, removing acres of invasive species, and constantly developing great collaborative working partnerships with ecological leaders from the southeast. Currently, Dylan’s work has found him in part, doing native seed collection and banking of important, but often overlooked grassland species of the southeast. He believes that work such as this ensures the continuation of a rich ecological history of a region vitally important to the whole of Earth’s biodiversity, and that through collective effort and education, we can pass along the most meaningful parts of the human enterprise to future stewards.