Recreative Natives

Recreative Natives is a small, woman-owned nursery in Cropwell, AL specializing in plants native to Alabama.

Jessica Thompson has been working with plants native to the Southeast and the Peidmont region for over 15 years. Her love of native plants started in my own back yard with a Yellow Passion Vine I could not eradicate. Despite my own efforts, 100 Gulf Fritillary caterpillars devoured it late that summer. And I was fascinated. Hooked, you could say. I read all about them, and in doing so stumbled upon Doug Tallamy’s newly published book. It was life changing and has changed my career twice.

As a landscape designer in the Atlanta area, it made me begin to question my practices. I slowly transitioned my business to native-only landscapes. I enjoyed 6 years designing wildlife gardens that included certifications from Atlanta Audubon Society.

Her Beginnings in Alabama

When they moved to Cropwell, Alabama for my husband’s job, I was starting my landscaping reputation from scratch again. Step one was locating nurseries that stocked native plants. There were none. All I found were popular cultivars and no variety. I started trying to propagate my own plants just to landscape my own backyard. But my unemployment hobby was getting expensive, so I tried selling my extra plants on Facebook Marketplace. It was a bigger hit than I expected. I began to consider that maybe the area needed a native plant nursery before it needed a native plant landscaper. In April 2021, Recreative Natives was launched with the goal of making plants native to Alabama and the Southeast available to the backyard gardener.