MsK NURSERY
MsK Nursery at Kruckeberg Botanic Garden is open year-round. Visit us to find PNW natives, plants from the garden’s collection, and rare and unusual species. We are located in the Kruckeberg Botanic Garden, giving you the unique opportunity to see how your young plants will look as mature specimens.
The way we grow is as natural as possible, incorporating organic fertilizers, and shying away from any chemical products. Additionally, we make an effort to source plants that are organic and sustainably grown. Plants available in the nursery with green tags were propagated on site at the MsK Nursery.
We typically have a few specialty sales per year with wider plant selections available; our Spring Ephemeral Sale in March, our annual Mother’s Day Sale in May, and our Fall Tree and Shrub Sale in October. Winter is usually a time when we are busy propagating, and preparing for spring. As a general note, our availability tends to be low in the winter, and peaks around Mother’s Day.
*Purchase is limited to 7 PLANTS of any one SPECIES per customer per visit.* We rarely stock large quantities of any one plant, as we are a small operation with limited growing space.
Our inventory changes freuqently, for questions about specific plant availability, please email nursery@kruckeberg.org, or call 206-546-1281, and follow the extension for MsK Nursery.
Open Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.
March - October: 10am-5pm
November - February: 10am-3pm
Admission is free, but a donation is appreciated!
20312 15th Ave NW, Shoreline, WA 98177
206-546-1281
info@kruckeberg.org
Native Plants
MsK Nursery is founded on the passion for native flora. Our goal is to continue offering quality native plants for the home gardener and enthusiast. In addition to the expected repertoire of the native plant palette, we strive to keep our propagation efforts up on the harder to find, unusual native plants. We also propagate a choice selection of hardy exotic plants that are showcased throughout the garden, so if you see something and are curious, feel free to ask if we are growing it. In addition, we are constantly seeking out new sources for seed or plant material in our native flora to expand our inventory. Quite often, the person you’re purchasing your plant from in the nursery might very well be the one who propagated it. Some plants that grow in our forests are next to impossible to cultivate in nursery conditons, they are usually dependent on strong mycorrhizal associations with the adjacent tree canopy where they grow. And others still may be semi-parasitic or something like the Ghost Plant (Monotropa uniflora) that are considered a mycoheterotroph.
Rare Plants
MsK Rare and Native plant nursery has always been a source for unusual and interesting plant species. With over 2000 species in the garden’s collection (Art and Mareen were quite the collectors!) there is never a shortage of plants to propagate and introduce to the gardening public. In fact, that is precisely how the nursery came into existence. Mareen Kruckeberg was an extraordinary propagator of many hard-to-find plants and began to offer her ‘extras’ to friends and colleagues within the horticultural community. Eventually, she began a yearly tradition of opening the garden to the public on Mother’s Day weekend, to sell her special plants. This led to the official incorporation of the MsK Nursery in 1969. The initials in the nursery name stand for Mareen Schultz Kruckeberg. Schultz was her last name before marrying Dr. Kruckeberg. The glass nursery greenhouse (which still stands today) was built in 1970. Mareen’s legacy can also be seen in our annual Mother’s Day Sale, which continues to this day, thanks to the efforts of many volunteers and the support of our greater community.
Mareen was a skilled botanical illustrator, and even had her own greeting cards printed with many of her striking illustrations, including of the rare species. She was also talented at growing ferns from spore, a tradition that we have lovingly carried on in the nursery. What we offer in terms of rarities does change throughout the year, so if your looking for something unique, please check with us and see if we have what your looking for.
Our Partners
We are partnering with local nurseries to offer you an intriguing and unique variety of plants. Since the pandemic, growers have been struggling to meet the demands of gardeners. With these other local nurseries, we are striving to make available to you the native plant selections you’ve come to know and love. Currently, we are offering choice species from our own nursery, and will be adding more selections from Tadpole Haven Native Plants in the coming weeks. Additionally, we will be hosting Botanica, https://www.botanicaplants.com/ at our annual Mother’s Day sale, bringing her wonderful varieties of interesting and hard to find perennials. Through this new partnering model, we are able to bring in new, rarely offered species that we wouldn’t normally have available. This also helps us to augment our own offerings, and continue to propagate the hard to find, rare plants that have come to be the niche of our nursery. We also augment our inventory with native plants from local wholesale growers like T&L, https://www.tandlnursery.com/. Due to the size limitations of our nursery, and the popularity of certain plants (ie: huckleberries, kinnickinnick) this partnering is vital to keep those workhorse native plants in stock.