Photo/Fred Greaves
Jeff Quiter, left, farm manager at Hedgerow Farms, walks between fields of lupine and yarrow. Manolo Sánchez, right, collections expert at the farm, searches for native seeds to plant at Hedgerow Farms, above.
for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. The department, which must go through a bidding process before making purchases, had to write special contracts with Hedgerow Farms, Martinelli says, because they had no competitors. “They were the only company that provided what we wanted.” One of the keys to the farm’s success, Michaels says, is the knowledge and experience of its collections experts. Originally from Chiapas, Mexico, Manolo Sánchez was working in Yuba City’s apple, peach and prune orchards in 2010, harvesting fruit and doing other traditional farm work, when his friend, Alejandro García, invited him to work at Hedgerow Farms. Since then, Sánchez and García have crisscrossed California, going as far north as Humboldt and as far south as Bakersfield, trekking through hills and creek beds to collect samples of native grasses and wildflowers to plant at Hedgerow Farms. “They’re some of the best botanists in the state,” Michaels says. Genetics matter The farm pays close attention to the genetics of each species, which is tied to a particular location, microclimate and soil type. “Every species we grow has a place it was originally collected from. We generally try to return the species back to that area,” Michaels says. “If we collect seed from a poppy from the Central Valley, we put the seed we produce from it back into Central Valley restoration projects.” In 2016, Martinelli of Fish and Wildlife began sourcing seeds from Hedgerow Farms for a restoration project in the Knoxville Wildlife Area, a nature preserve in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Napa, Lake, Colusa and Yolo counties.
Photo/Caleb Hampton
The farm harvests plants for seed from April through October, using machines similar to wheat or rice harvesters. The plants are then dried on tarps and put through combines to separate the seeds from the plant material. The seeds are cleaned and shipped to a warehouse in the San Joaquin County town of Tracy. Native plants grown at the farm include blue-eyed grass, poppies, lupine, sage and many others. Over the years, the farm has built an inventory of millions of pounds of native seeds. Hedgerow also has a farm in the Santa Barbara County community of Los Alamos, where it grows plants better suited to coastal climates and soil types. Because the farm is so unique in what it grows, “there’s lots of trial and error and learning from mistakes and experiences,” says farm manager Jeff Quiter. “There’s not a lot of research on stuff that we grow.” ‘Forging the way’ A handful of farms have adopted Hedgerow’s model. But for years, according to land managers, Hedgerow Farms was on its own in producing native plant seed in California, and it continues to lead the way. “They were out there alone forging the way for restoration,” says Stacy Martinelli, environmental scientist
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Summer 2024
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