Everything together
The activity materials, simple instructions, and supporting information travel together in a reusable tote.
Home Schools & communityA shared experience.
A shared experience.
A growing connection.
Hands-on plant care, learning, and habitat, shaped around the people in your community.
One program, flexible enough to fit different communities.
Foster-a-Sprout is built around a simple shared experience: care for a young native plant and help it reach lasting habitat. How that experience looks can change with the people, setting, and amount of time available.
A ready-to-use kit can be dropped off and run by the site.
Foster-a-Sprout does not require us to lead every session. A site can receive a tote with the supplies and instructions needed for the activity, along with a flat of young native plants for participants to choose from.
Choose a sprout
A flat of young native plants gives participants the chance to choose the plant they want to foster.
Site-run when needed
Staff can lead the activity themselves using the kit. Once the activity is complete, we pick the tote and any unpotted native plants back up. The site is left only with the foster plants the group has chosen and is able to care for.
The power of giving care
Giving care can be meaningful too.
In care and support communities, Foster-a-Sprout can create a small reversal of the usual roles. People who often receive care get the chance to care for something living themselves.
The activity does not have to be complicated or long. Participants can up-pot, water, observe, name, and care for a plant. Some communities keep their foster plants on site, while others send them forward to another Forever Habitat Home.
There are lots of ways to get hands-on with native plants.
Schools are one place these activities can happen, but they can also work with community groups, care communities, families, and at events. Foster-a-Sprout, pollinator and habitat activities, and Seed Share Vaults are different ways to participate. They can stand on their own or connect when that makes sense.
Foster-a-Sprout
Participants foster a young native plant by up-potting it, watering it, observing it, and caring for it until it is ready for a permanent home.
Pollinators & habitat
Native plants create a direct way to explore the relationships between plants, pollinators, and the habitat around them.
Seed Share Vaults
Native seeds are collected, cleaned, and stored by species in small packets inside a shared binder. People can add seed, choose seed to grow, or use the vault at a school, community program, or event. It creates another hands-on way to participate in native plants without replacing the fostering experience.
Fostering can stand on its own or become a longer experience.
For many sites, Foster-a-Sprout can simply be about fostering and caring for native plants. That is a complete experience on its own.
When a site has the time, space, and interest to do more, the experience can extend into the next stages of growing native plants. Participants can collect and process seed, store and share it through a Seed Share Vault, cold stratify selected seeds, and germinate them to begin another generation of plants.
How far a site takes the experience depends on what works for that community.
Get Involved