There’s a stretch of south Lincoln where the pavement gives way to gravel and greenhouse plastic, and it doesn’t look like much from the road. Inside those hoop houses, though, sit rows of little pots holding plants that grew here in Nebraska long before anyone planted a lawn.
No hybrids, no fussy imports, nothing sprayed with anything that would harm a bee. Once you understand what’s in those trays, an ordinary Saturday morning errand starts to feel like something closer to a field trip.
A Greenhouse Row on South First Street
Gravel crunches underfoot, hoop houses stretch out in low white arcs, and folding tables hold hundreds of small black pots labeled with names like rattlesnake master and pale purple coneflower. That’s the whole scene at Midwest Natives Nursery on the south edge of Lincoln, in Lancaster County, where the city starts thinning into farmland.
What sets the operation apart is a rule that never bends. Every single plant grown and sold here is native to the Great Plains, mostly perennial wildflowers and grasses that evolved alongside Nebraska’s bees, butterflies, moths and birds…