Testimonials

We’ve been working with Watershed Nursery for years, and they always provide us with an excellent variety of locally sourced California native plants for habitat restoration. They’re helpful, knowledgeable, and use scientific practices so that we can be sure that any plants we get are healthy, genetically diverse, and sustainably collected.

Diana Benner and her team at The Watershed Nursery were great to work with on the Bayfront Levees Tidal Wetland Mitigation, Alum Rock Park Riparian Restoration, Riviera Terrace Riparian Mitigation, and the Quito Road Residential Development Riparian Mitigation Projects — they provided high quality plant material, communicated regularly with status updates, and were flexible with a few last-minute species substitutions needed to respond to site conditions.

I’d like to say that I continue to be impressed with the quality of your nursery stock. Through all the garden installations I have done, through frost and heat wave, my Watershed Nursery plants have proven themselves to be extraordinarily healthy, tough and reliable. Amazing!
I love those tubes.

The Muir Heritage Land Trust has had the pleasure of working with the Watershed Nursery for the past four years on three major habitat restoration projects. Partnering with the Watershed Nursery has enabled us to revegetate these sites with healthy plants from watershed specific seed stock with great success. Laura and Diana have especially been wonderful in working with the Environmental Studies Academy students, where they are teaching the next generation about natives, plant propagation and restoration.

The staff at The Watershed Nursery are very knowledgeable and offered me personal attention in selecting plants for restoration projects and native gardens.

One of the most rewarding experiences in developing our fledgling garden has been working with Laura and Diana at the Watershed Nursery. I’ve commented many times that the highest quality native plants can be found at their nursery. We have seen a consistent record of success in plants we have purchased from them. And, on top of that Laura and Diana have always offered great customer support backed up by sound professional expertise.

The Friends of Alhambra Creek are happy to count the Watershed Nursery among our list of Friends. Laura and Diana have been with us on many of our endeavors — with plants, knowledge and encouragement. These two ladies bring more than local native plants to restorations — they bring themselves and become part of the team. Warm and friendly, knowledgeable and supportive, they provide leadership when we need it, fitting in with the rest of us and helping us learn and grow and move ahead. The Friends of Alhambra Creek count ourselves as Friends of the Watershed Nursery.

By far, the plant material we received from Watershed Nursery was the most robust, healthy, thriving batch that we received during this effort. Your willingness to work through our several wrinkles during this work has been much appreciated; everything from holding the plants for longer than originally anticipated to assisting us with irrigation ideas when it became clear that we would have to over-summer the plant material until the next out-planting effort. Thanks to your involvement, there are an additional 4,500 grindelia plants on the East Bay shoreline, no small addition.

The Watershed Nursery has been an invaluable partner in the Coastal Conservancy’s Invasive Spartina Project revegetation program. We greatly appreciate their expertise in carefully planned native propagation, involving a variety of complexities and the need for piloting new approaches. The nursery managers and staff are excellent, and the plants are always healthy, robust, and on time!