MIKE BERKLEY

Wild about native plants

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MIKE BERKLEY FOUNDED GroWild Nursery in 1997 alongside his partner, Terri Barnes. Located outside of Nashville, Tenn., the nursery supplies native perennials, trees and shrubs to landscape designers, often for ecological projects, habitat restoration, green roofs and rain gardens. GroWild also welcomes retail customers in search of native plants for their home gardens.

SCOTT BEUERLEIN: You're fond of saying that you were into native plants before they were cool. How did you get started as a native-plant nursery owner?

MIKE BERKLEY: It started back at Middle Tennessee State University. I decided I wanted to do botany. I was thinking about how to connect horticulture to field botany. But botany was under the science department and horticulture was under agriculture. And I thought it was crazy that these two subjects never got together.

In horticulture, even in design, it had nothing to do with natural design. They wouldn’t even mention native plants. Then on the botany side, my professors would take us to the wild and key out some plants, and I would ask, “Can we use these in landscaping?” And they would answer no! So they were separate. It was almost like they butted heads.

After working at a chain garden center, I was hired by Paul Moore in 1992 to work as the buyer for Moore & Moore Garden Center. He wanted us to be the first garden center to feature native plants in Nashville. And that blew me away! With my background in field botany and at a chain garden center, I had this great new opportunity. Right next to the hostas would be Virginia bluebells. And we would point out that it was native. But back then, people still didn’t care. For a plant to really sell, it had to be pretty. There wasn’t yet any ethical drive.