SEQUIM — Tucked away on a 5-acre property in Happy Valley, Friendly Natives Plants and Design specializes in native plants.
It is “dedicated to helping homeowners and small project managers create, enhance and restore [with native plants] their natural habitat whether it be shoreline, meadow, wetland, woodland or backyard,” according to the company website.
“I’m really excited about helping people restore or recreate their meadows,” owner Lissa Bennett said of her nursery at 2464 Happy Valley Road.
Kim Williams, Clallam Conservation District district manager, said that Friendly Natives is on the district’s recommendation list for native plant availability.
“When we order native plants they are usually in huge bulk orders that we order wholesale but her nursery is perfect for the landowner of Clallam County,” Williams said.
Bennett said she primarily works with homeowners looking to restore habitat in their backyards and people who have recently discovered or always loved natives.
Friendly Natives sells a wide and fluctuating variety of native plants in a fenced and neat outdoor nursery, flanked by an extensive compost system on one side and a large greenhouse on the other, bordered by native plants and surrounded by birds: flying, eating and singing.
“It makes sense to me to landscape with natives,” Bennett said. “They are beautiful and beneficial to the birds and wildlife around us.”
She said that natives tend to be low maintenance, as they are adapted to the local ecology.
However, as global climate changes traditional weather patterns, Bennett said it also makes sense to experiment with plantings.
The inventory covers all types of needs: bulbs, grasses, ground cover, ferns, vines, shrubs and bushes, and broadleaf evergreens, conifer and deciduous trees.
“The diversity of ecosystems and microclimates abound here in the Sequim Prairie and Dungeness Valley and Olympic Mountain foothills,” Bennett said.
“We carry many of the native trees, shrubs, perennials etc that thrive and provide habitat for wildlife, birds and pollinators,” she said.
” It is rewarding to create habitat for quail and others with hedgerows of wild roses, snowberry, serviceberry, Indian plum and black hawthorn.”
Bennett said she builds her inventory in several ways, such as propagation, acquisition from areas being torn up for construction and from third parties.
“Every year is different,” she said of the plants she sells.
Early spring tasks at Friendly Natives include,” getting ready for spring customers, potting up seedlings, foundlings and bare roots,” Bennett said.
Kim Williams, Clallam Conservation District district manager, said that Friendly Natives is on the district’s recommendation list for native plant availability.
“When we order native plants they are usually in huge bulk orders that we order wholesale but her nursery is perfect for the landowner of Clallam County,” Williams said.
According to the Conservation District’s website: “Plants native to our region have evolved with the native insects, fungi, pests and diseases, and wildlife for many thousands of years.
“Thus, they have developed the ability to attract native animals that benefit them [such as pollinating and seed-dispersing insects and birds], and repel or survive native organisms that harm them [such as diseases and insects].
“Native plants attract a wider variety of native wildlife than do introduced plants, and some native wildlife are totally dependent on native plants. In addition, the plants native to our area are adapted to growing in our region’s soils and climate, requiring less maintenance [such as watering and fertilizing] than do non-natives.”
Bennett said she has been working and living with plants her entire life.
“My parents always had a garden,” she said.
As a native of Kitsap County, her parents would often bring her to the Olympic Peninsula to hike and camp.
She studied organic farming at the Evergreen State College in the 1970s and has been working professionally with plants around the Puget Sound ever since. Bennett moved to Sequim in the fall of 2018.
“I feel really privileged to be able to move out here,” she said.
Friendly Natives is operated almost entirely by Bennett herself — she has one employee that travels from Port Angeles for four hours a week.
It is open by appointment only. Email lissa@friendlynatives.net.
Lists of plants Bennett sells are available for reading online, as well as a contact number and other information at friendlynatives.net.
