Science & Nature

There’s a Shortage of Native Seeds, So Cook County Preserves Is Growing Its Own Supply

Cook County Forest Preserves is on a mission to restore 30,000 acres of habitat to high-quality condition by the year 2040.

There’s just one tiny little problem.

“Even if we had all the money in the world, which we don’t, but even if we did, there just isn’t enough (native) seed out there,” said Iza Redlinski, deputy director of resource management for the forest preserves.

It’s a dilemma facing land managers across the U.S: You can’t restore native habitat without native plants. And you can’t grow native plants without native seed.

A 2023 report sounded the alarm about the scarcity of native seed: The native segment of the commercial seed production industry is comparatively small and highly specialized, and there isn’t enough species diversity in the offerings that do exist. Too often, key species are unavailable or buyers have to make do with substitutions, and that can affect the success of a restoration project.

Pat Hayes, long-time volunteer site steward at Cook County’s 1,000-acre Orland Grassland preserve, didn’t need data to tell her what she’s been experiencing firsthand.

“You can restore all day long cutting out invasives … but if you don’t have seed to back you up, it’s tough,” Hayes said. “I put out a list just last year of 12 different seeds that I would like from native nurseries, and I got four of them. And of those four, all the seeds were in envelopes that would fit in a shoebox. And it cost $1,000.”

So the Cook County forest preserve district, in partnership with the Chicago Botanic Garden, is taking matters into its own hands. It’s growing its own seed.

Ambitious Amplification

Seed collecting from within the forest preserves themselves is laborious and relies on volunteers, like a team from WTTW that spent a morning snipping seed heads at Bunker Hill prairie in fall 2024. (Patty Wetli / WTTW News)

Seed has been collected from within the preserves for decades, but until now, plants haven’t been grown for the specific purpose of seed production.

That changed in 2024 with the construction of 65 seed beds at one of the district’s landscape maintenance facilities. This year, the program partners are kicking things up several notches and have set a goal of producing 2,000 pounds of seed a year by 2030, eventually reaching 6,000 pounds a year.

“Which is ambitious,” Redlinski acknowledged.

How ambitious?

“Well, last year we did, like, over 100 pounds,” she said. “So this is a big, huge effort.”

The leap forward in 2025, for a project dubbed the Seed Amplification Program, is only possible because of a tax increase Cook County voters approved for the forest preserves in 2022, money the district has funneled toward restoration work, Redlinski said.

The program is taking a multi-pronged approach, she explained. Among the tactics:

Molly Marz (foreground), the seed amplification program project manager, building a raised bed garden for native seeds to be used in Cook County forest preserve restoration projects. (Courtesy Forest Preserve District of Cook County)

— Some 5,000 rare species were planted in raised beds, requiring the most maintenance.

— Collection from the wild, a labor-intensive process, is continuing.

— Some seed is being banked at the Chicago Botanic Garden, particularly useful in case a species needs to be resurrected.

— And finally, there are wild seed gardens — kind of like mini-restorations themselves — needing less management than seed beds.

One such wild seed garden was planted on a warm, sunny morning in early May, just across the road from Orland Grassland, on acreage the forest preserves acquired in 2022.

Molly Marz, seed amplification program manager, teamed with Redlinski to oversee the placement of roughly 3,000 plants directly into the soil. Two thousand more plants would be added once they’d matured a bit more.

Their crew consisted of site steward Hayes and a group of Orland Grassland’s diehard volunteers, along with a team from Greencorps Chicago, laboriously digging hole after hole after hole with dibble bars — a tool that’s kind of like a trowel crossed with a corkscrew.

Species at this new seed nursery will include prairie milkweed (Asclepias sullivantii), beardtongue (Penstemon digitalis), prairie dock (Silphium terebinthinaceum), rosinweed (Silphium integrifolium) and golden alexander (Zizia aurea). As they take root, they’ll form a prairie of their own on this once degraded site, on top of providing seed for other preserves.

“We’re getting a twofer,” said Marz.

For Greencorps supervisor Jeremy Whisenton, who has a decade of conservation work under his belt, taking part in the creation of a wild seed garden was an entirely new experience and a chance to view the restoration process literally from the ground up.

“When we go out there, when we do the work, it’s mostly mature plants — plants that are already flowering or have already flowered,” Whisenton said. “Here we’re actually doing the first step in creating their establishment.”

It was a sentiment shared by Mary Ann Maglia, a twice-weekly volunteer at Orland Grassland. Installing a seed garden was a welcome change of pace from workdays that more typically involve clearing invasive species including callery pear, autumn olive and honeysuckle.

“This is exciting,” Maglia said. “It’s fun to see the other side of it.”

Greencorps supervisor Jeremy Whisenton (l) and trainee Jimmie Campbell partner on digging holes and getting native plants into the ground, helping to establish a wild seed garden for Cook County forest preserves, May 7, 2025. (Patty Wetli / WTTW News)

The push to escalate seed production is coming just as the forest preserve district begins tackling restoration projects in increasingly degraded habitat.

Initially, the district prioritized management of its highest quality remnant areas, sites where the soil contained native seed banks that required minimal coaxing to spring back to life.

“All it takes in those remnant high-quality places is to remove invasive species, reintroduce fire and then magic happens,” Redlinski said. “Now as those areas are restored and sort of brought back, we’re moving down the priority line and we’re finding that we need more and more seed.”

In areas where the soil seed bank is nonexistent, combating invasives is often an exercise in futility, as the bare ground becomes a blank slate for unwanted plants to mount a comeback.

“So we’re trying to get (native) seed on the ground quickly,” Marz said. “It’s a really critical tool in the toolbox of restoration. It’s just as important as fire, as the clearing…. It’s another critical tool that we need to help restore all of these sites in Cook County.”

Volunteer site steward Pat Hayes has spent two decades helping restore Orland Grassland. A seed nursery is a dream come true for her, she said. Here, Hayes helps create the wild seed garden, May 7, 2025. (Patty Wetli / WTTW News)

As with most aspects of the restoration process, which is still a relatively new science, there will likely be an element of trial and error to the production of homegrown seed. Not every native plant has been thoroughly studied, and ecologists have yet to crack the code of some species’ reproductive systems.

“I used to be a farmer, and growing crops is a lot more straightforward," said Marz. “I appreciate how complex native plants are and how complex ecosystems can be…. It’s an adventure for sure.”

(This article has been updated to reflect Cook County's target date for habitat restoration.)

Contact Patty Wetli: @pattywetli | (773) 509-5623 |  [email protected]

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