Herring Run Nursery — Local services in Parkville

Herring Run Nursery is a gateway to understanding how your choices about what you do with your yard can have a real beneficial impact on the seriously endangered ecosystem we all depend on to survive.

Also, it's nonprofit and supports one of Baltimore's most vital organizations, Blue Water Baltimore. It has cool plants, knowledgeable people who give great service (many of them volunteers), and sometimes even golf cart rides. It will change how you think about gardening (and this is a good, good thing).

Pro tip: buy straight species plants rather than cultivars for more reliable environmental impact. So, day, just Heuchera or Coral Bells and not Heuchera 'Le Fancy Pants' or other cute crud in single quotes. Some native cultivars are as helpful as the species but they have to be studied on a case-by-case basis to find out and it's not possible to do it as fast as they come out.

Also, if this is your gateway, you can also check out Chesapeake Natives, Earth Sangha, and Kollar Nursery, other local nurseries that focus on native plants. And look up the Maryland Area Environmentally Conscious Gardening group on Facebook for support from other humans... and the books and lectures of Doug Tallamy for the science behind why planting native plants and removing invasives will help my five year old and the kids in your life have a better shot at old age in a...

Though smallish for a nursery, Herring Run really has a great variety of native plants to build your ethical, wildlife friendly garden - all at pretty reasonable prices too! We've built 6 dedicated garden areas, mostly with their stock, including a rain garden, 3 shade gardens, a sun garden, and bolstered our yard's tiny wooded area with ferns, shrubs, and woodland flowers. We've also added 6 trees to our yard and some shrub areas. All of the stock from here has thrived, even through some negligence of our own during droughts. Some Highlights:

1. They always have someone knowledgeable on hand to answer any questions or help you decide on the best plants to suit your needs, you can even contact them through facebook.
2. Smooth checkout process with convenient and environmentally friendly emailed receipts.
3. They offer gift cards!
4. Nursery events for the whole family throughout the year, like the harvest festival in attached pic.
5. Educational opportunities, like the rain barrel workshop and tips on gardening for birds and bees.

OVERALL: Beyond this being an excellent local native plant nursery, it's nice to know that the money you spend here does double the good, as all of their profits go to fund Blue Water Baltimore projects. This is THE place in the Baltimore area for beautiful and wildlife-sustaining native plants - so...

I adored HRN for years. Faithfully visited several times every year on a Saturday or Sunday (I live across town and work M-F) to browse, always learned about new plants and came home with a small jungle. Never disappointed. Five-star experience....then. Now - they seem to be intentionally making themselves inaccessible. Open only 9-3 on Thursdays and Fridays and occasional Saturdays. Surprise - most people work during the week, and shop for their gardens on the weekends! For what benighted reason did they think these hours were a good idea? Maybe they're convenient for residents and workers in NE Baltimore...but HRN used to pull in gardeners from a far wider base. And now they've made that impossible. What a shame. Going back to Greenfields and other plant stores that make themselves available to their...