Beaver Food Forest Farm: Native Plant Nursery for Ecosystem Restoration

No wetlands were harmed in the growing of these plants.

Beaver Food Forest Farm is a peat-free, coir-free native plant nursery in North Central Washington State, specializing in plants that beavers use for food and construction materials. We are dedicated to cultivating a future with enough clean water for everyone, by specializing in native plants that support beavers in their crucial watershed restoration work. No one keeps water on the landscape better than beavers.

Plants for people who value intact wetlands and clean water: To help preserve peat bogs and clean water, we don’t use peat or coconut coir. Beaver Food Forest Farm uses potting media made from waste products such as recycled paper, leaves, wood chips, woody debris, sheep manure, and low grade, pelletized sheep wool. We are integrating biochar in July 2024. We grow willows, cottonwood, aspen, red osier dogwood, and other native plant species that can be used in process-based ecological restoration.

The Beaver Food Forest nursery does not use any single-use plastics.

Ecologically responsible plant propagation
Native Plant Specialist
Contributing to Ecological Health

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Plant Availability

Most of the species shown below will be available in summer or fall 2024 in deep pots (D60L 2.7 X 14″), and in ½, 1, 2, and 5 gallon sized pots. 1 gallon plants are available in traditional horticulture reused plastic pots as well as "double-decker" milk cartons. We also have native willow clump plantings and a limited selection of aspen, cottonwood, and water birch in 10, 15, and 25 gallon pots. If you need something different, let us know, and we'll see if it's possible! All ½ gallon plants are in beverage cartons, which have the advantage of tearing off for planting, with less disturbance to the root system. They are also waste products being reused, and do not contribute to plastics manufacturing.

Cornus sericea /
Red Osier Dogwood

Red osier dogwood (Cornus sericea), is an important habitat feature along creeks in the region. The gorgeous red bark contrasts with green leaves, and the white blossoms add a beautiful accent in spring. An excellent addition to any stream restoration project (or backyard!). Availability TBA.

Prunus virginiana / Chokecherry

Chokecherry (Prunus virginiana) provides excellent habitat for a variety of wildlife. Birds use it for food, nesting, and cover. Bees, butterflies, and ants eat the flower nectar. Many different mammals also eat its fruit. Chokecherry works well for shading streams and for specific stream restoration purposes. It has many important traditional cultural values. Chokecherry is also aesthetically pleasing for the backyard. Available in 1 gallon tall pots, 1 gallon short pots, 2 gallon, and 5 gallon sizes.

Salix amygdaloides /
Peachleaf Willow

Peachleaf willow (Salix amygdaloides) grows from around 200 to 8,000 feet in elevation. It can grow as a tall tree or can be smaller and can grow in clumps. It is often found growing near Coyote willow and cottonwood (Hoag, 2002).

Available in 1 and 5 gallon pots.

Salix drummondiana /
Drummond Willow

Drummond willow (Salix drummondiana) grows at elevations from 700 to 11,000 feet, but more often at 4,000 feet and higher. Drummond is usually 6-13 feet tall, but can grow up to 20 feet. It's often found growing near Engelmann spruce and subalpine fir, at the edges of streams and wetlands. Drummond should be planted in the bank and overbank zone.

Available in single stem deep pots and multiple stem / clump plants in 5 and 15 gallon sizes.

Salix exigua / Coyote Willow

Coyote willow (Salix exigua) is a preferred beaver food and construction material and is also excellent for bank stabilization and sediment capture.

Available in 1/2 gallon, 1, 2, and 5 gallon sizes.

Salix lucida / Pacific Willow

Pacific willow (Salix lucida) tends to grow like a tree and makes a strong complement to shrubbier willows like Coyote willow (Salix exigua) or Mackenzie's willow (Salix prolixa), for varied canopy cover.

Available in 1/2 gallon, 1, 2, and 5 gallon sizes.

Salix prolixa / Mackenzie Willow

Mackenzie's Willow (Salix prolixa)

Available in 1 gallon tall pots, 1 gallon short pots, 2 gallon, and 5 gallon sizes, as well as 15 and 20 gallon clumps.

Salix species /
Mixed Native Willows

Similar to a surprise goodie bag, let us select a mix of native willows (Salix species) for you to plant in wet areas.

Available in 1/2 gallon, 1, 2, and 5 gallon sizes.

Sambucus caerulea / Blue Elderberry

Blue Elderberry (Sambucus nigra) is an excellent food source for many different wildlife species, and is an important traditional culturally valuable plant as well.

You can steam the berries to make juice or syrup, or leave them for wildlife to enjoy.

Available in 1 gallon tall pots, 2 gallon, and 5 gallon sizes.

Sambucus caerulea / Blue Elderberry

Elderberries are ripe in late summer.

Upland Plants

For those working to bring back a healthy upland or shrub-steppe, mixed conifer plant community, we have plants for you as well! Examples: Lupine, blanketflower, wild rose

Wetland Plants - Other

We grow a variety of wetland plants that help create a diverse and healthy native wetland plant community to support a wide variety of wildlife species. Examples: Scouring rush, sedges

About the Nursery

Who grows the plants?

Julie Vanderwal is a Certified Ecological Restoration Practitioner (CERP) and operator of Beaver Food Forest Farm. Julie has worked at the intersection of ecological restoration and education for over 25 years. She has worked with students to start a habitat restoration program, a native plant nursery, and a farm-to-table program, and involved students in all phases of stream restoration. Julie is a freelance watershed restoration specialist.

Responsible potting media

Our potting media is made from repurposed waste products rather than peat mined from pristine wetlands or coconut coir shipped from the other side of the globe. We use recycled paper ("Pittmoss" peat alternative), aged wood chips and shredded wood, composted leaves, composted sheep manure with straw, and pelletized low grade sheep wool.

Beaver architecture

Beavers are the ultimate water keepers, wetland engineers, and creators of biodiversity. When beavers have enough riparian plants to eat and to build with, they transform the landscape.

Why Peat-Free?

Peat forms in wetlands over thousands of years when organic plant materials partially decay under low oxygen conditions. This process sequesters massive amounts of carbon, creates pockets of intense biodiversity, and develops landscape-scale sponges that store and clean much needed water. Together, these benefits epitomize the resilience to climate change that as a society, we are fumbling toward prioritizing. Peat bogs are the equivalent of the Carmanah Valley, or an old growth redwood forest, from our point of view, working on ecological restoration. To use peat as part of a wetland restoration planting project would be like cutting down a magnificent, ancient tree in order to create wood chips to mulch a new tree planting. We have all of the resources we need in our communities to grow plants; we just need to use them to our advantage.

Excavated peat at Tahuya Lake, shown in "Peat Resources of Washington," published by the Washington State Department of Conservation in 1958. Peat extraction continues in Washington State to this day.

Why Coir Free?

Coconut coir, the most common peat alternative, is shipped from halfway across the world, often after being processed by grossly underpaid workers being exposed to illness-causing levels of dust, in a process that creates toxic waste products and depletes the soil and water quality. While there are companies processing coir in more sustainable and healthy ways, we have found that the market in the US does not track specifically where coir products come from and what practices are used to process it. In the United Kingdom, coir is rated based on several sustainability metrics, making it easy to find and purchase products that do less harm to water quality and human health. In the US, we don’t have a system in place yet, so our nursery opts not to use coir.

A block of coconut coir prior to being rehydrated

Ready to Learn More?

Click the buttons below for more info on these topics at Beaver Food Forest Farm:

Peat-Free Potting Mix

Floating Wetlands and Biologs

Pollinator Support

Cover Crops

At the end of each of the above info pages, you'll find a button that links back to this main webpage.

What People are Saying

Collaborator Experiences

Chris Hoag

As a Riparian Plant Ecologist, I have worked closely with Julie for the last several years on a variety of projects. Julie is a true professional when it comes to riparian and wetland ecosystems, and native plants. I have been so impressed with her drive, knowledge, and enthusiasm that I started mentoring her. We have used her experience in several webinars to improve the information that we were teaching. She continues to develop a strong skillset, and her drive to master a technique ensures maximum effectiveness of the treatments. Julie is a real asset to the field of stream restoration. She is inquisitive, skillful, and always learning, and helping others to learn with her. I am hopeful that Julie can continue my efforts to make riparian stream restoration something that most professionals can accomplish with a minimum of confusion and a maximum of confidence. She has my unequivocal support in all of her ecological restoration endeavors, and I recommend that you check out her native plant nursery.

Dana Visalli

Julie is a bona fide plant person. She took Tom Petty's song 'You Belong Among the Wildflowers' and rewrote it into a song about the life plants rather than girls. She is so enthusiastic about willows that I personally renamed her 'Salix' (the genus of all willows) because she is 'one of them.' Visiting Julie and her native plant nursery will be time well spent, I guarantee it.

Jeff Hardesty, Ed.D.
Oroville School District Superintendent

The Oroville School District has benefited greatly from Julie Vanderwal’s expertise while developing our farm-to-table and habitat restoration programs. Julie has a knack for not only project managing initiatives seamlessly at any scale, she is skilled at helping others to understand complex environmental processes so that they grow their own capacity for sustaining this work. Over many years, I have observed Julie to be the premier expert in the field, not only by content knowledge and work ethic, but by widely accomplished reputation. Because of Julie’s disposition and skill sets, our programs now teach students how to assess the condition of a habitat site, to source site specific seeds/cuttings, grow riparian plants for a variety of restoration applications, and to employ innovative propagation techniques in resourceful and effective ways.

Heather Simmons

I had the pleasure of working with Julie Vanderwal for several years while she was Conservation Coordinator with a non-profit organization. I was immediately impressed with Julie’s attention to detail in the project planning and grant application process. It was clear that she had put an incredible amount of thought into what the project needed to be successful. Julie recognized the importance of riparian buﬀer restoration, often an afterthought in many restoration projects, and developed a very thorough riparian planting plan that was updated annually to adapt to changing conditions. She led a group of practitioners to design and implement aggressive and eﬀective riparian planting and weed control techniques I wasn’t seeing elsewhere. This resulted in a very high survival rate rarely achieved east of the Cascades.

Why Beavers Matter

Beavers are a keystone species because their presence makes it possible for a plethora of other species to thrive, and because of the way they shape the landscape. Beavers create dams for their own survival, to generate deep enough water to hide under to escape predators. In so doing, they slow water down, back it up, and cause wetlands to form.

These beaver ponds and wetlands then become crucial for the reproduction, forage, and shelter for countless other species — in particular, amphibians and birds and the insects they rely on, but also habitat for mammals, reptiles, and fish. By slowing the flow, beavers have historically shaped riverine landscapes with a profound influence rivaling that of glaciers. Many of today's wet meadows were previously beaver ponds, with valleys now filled with rich soils and unique plant communities fostered by post-beaver conditions.

Going forward, by forming wetlands, beavers are also able to create the conditions needed to store water during high spring flows and during winter rain that would have previously fallen as snow. In this way, in a natural world facing substantial changes and challenges, beavers represent a pivotal opportunity for climate resilience.

Feed the beavers - make more water for everyone!

No wetlands were harmed in the growing of these plants.

Ready to Learn More?

Why Beavers Matter