At Ecoyards, we try where possible to salvage plants, along with concrete, soil, bricks, pavers and nursery pots for reuse. When we redo landscapes for clients, our clients will sometimes ask us to remove or replace certain trees and shrubs. We always try to find new homes for these plants. We either give them away to friends or plant them in our own yard.

King County has a terrific program that rescues native plants from construction sites to replant later at salmon habitat and wildlife restoration projects around the county. The county salvages the plants from sites slated for development and provides them at a low-cost for revegetation projects throughout the state. Native plants such as the evergreen huckleberry (pictured right) attract native wildlife, require little maintenance and water, helps control erosion and runoff, survive better than ornamental plants and are truly Northwest. At Ecoyards, we use native plants in virtually every project we do. Some of our favorites are evergreen huckleberry, flowering currants, and mountain hemlocks.

PlantAmnesty also has a great “green share” program with an active on-line adopt a plant list. You need to be a PlantAmnesty member to view the list, but anyone may list a plant for adoption.

The city of Seattle and others have made it easy to recycle your used nursery plant pots, but we found an even better way to put them to good use. At Ecoyards, we have hundreds of pots that we try to reuse or find good homes for.

This week, we cleaned up our used pots and delivered them to volunteers with the Longfellow Creek Community Garden and the Longfellow P-Patch, the Community Harvest of Southwest Seattle and the West Seattle Edible Garden Fair.  They plan to reuse the pots for several community gardening projects in West Seattle.

One of the downsides to being a plant-a-holic is not knowing what to do with all those empty plastic nursery pots that stack up over time. Most cities or counties won’t accept plastic nursery pots in its curbside recycling program. But many nurseries do!  (Edit – Feb. 12, 2009 – starting March 30, 2009, city of Seattle residents will be allowed to toss plastic nursery pots in curb-side recycling bins.)

Don’t toss them in the trash. Recycled agricultural plastics are used to make truck bed liners, black plastic landscape supplies, drain pipe, plastic lumber for benches, posts and pilings, pallets, automotive components, tool handles and black trash bags.

If you’re a regular Ecoyards maintenance customer, we’ll pick them up for you at no charge. Just set them out the next time we are scheduled to visit, and we’ll recycle them for you. We try to reuse the nursery pots, where possible, and have teamed up with volunteers from the Longfellow Creek Community Garden and the Longfellow P-Patch, the Community Harvest of Southwest Seattle and the West Seattle Edible Garden Fair.  They plan to reuse the pots for several community gardening projects in West Seattle.

Check the following resources to see which nurseries take what. Make sure they are empty, clean, unbroken nursery pots. For example, West Seattle Nursery, one of Ecoyards’ favorite local retail nurseries, accepts 1-gallon pots or larger. Flowerworld Nursery in Maltby takes pots of all sizes.

The Washington State Nursery & Landscape Association provides a list of about a dozen nurseries in King County that take pots.

Here’s a list put together by Seattle Public Utilities and Resources (PDF), a nonprofit environmental group  works with cities and farmers to recycle agriculture plastic and other items.

If you live in Clark County, click here for a list of nurseries that will recycle pots.