Native Plant Associates

Native Plant Associates, based on Martha’s Vineyard, is a supplier of professional services to landscape architects, landscape contractors, and conservation organizations. We take a pro-active approach to Sandplain Grasslands restoration and expansion, through native grass and wildflower seedings and plantings.

Native Plant Associates is the Northeast’s exclusive contract-grower of Sandplain Grassland grasses and wildflowers, in full landscape sizes and on a commercial- scale. It specializes in the mechanical harvesting and seeding of Little Bluestem – first among equals in the family of Sandplain grasses. It specializes also in sourcing key native woody ground covers found in heathland variations of Sandplain Grasslands, including Lowbush Blueberry, Bearberry and Sheep Laurel. This full pallet gives landscape planners and property owners the tools to re-create the wild beauty of Sandplain Grasslands– creating new meadows from scratch, restoring overgrown Grasslands, bringing the wild up to building envelopes, in garden design, and at golf course roughs.

Little Bluestem is the dramatic core grass of Sandplain Grasslands. It has a persistent seedhead display and dramatic cinnamon Fall color, and it stands up architecturally to  repeated rain and snow cover. Native Plant Associates uses especially adapted equipment to harvest this fluffy, chaffy seed in the Fall, and to sow it mechanically in the Spring.

Native Plant Associates typically follows a first-year native grass seeding with a planting of native wildflowers and ground covers, the  following Spring. This assures meadow design based upon plant combinations, densities, and runs typical of Sandplain Grassland habitat.