This project was proposed by past nursery intern Aileen Liu in the fall of 2017. The goal of this project was to make a coppice garden where species could be grown specifically to take cuttings from, a form of vegetative reproduction.
Coppicing is a form of vegetative reproduction for woody shrubs that root easily. Coppicing involves taking 5-10 inch cuttings of a branch under the node where leaves would grow. Trimming this way also encourages upward and outward growth of the original shrub, so each year the shrub will produce more biomass from which we can take cuttings. With an increase in number of cuttings every year, we are able to increase our plant production and sales.
One thing to note in this form of plant production is that all the plants produced from cuttings are genetically identical to their mother plants and can therefore limit genetic diversity if all planted together. In this sense, the SER-UW Native Plant Nursery tries not to rely solely on coppice cutting for any particular species.
We used raised beds lent to us from the UW Botanic Gardens near our hoophouse. We grow Cornus sericea (red osier dogwood), Physocarpus capitatus (Pacific ninebark), Lonicera involucrata (twinberry honeysuckle), and Symphoricarpos albus (common snowberry).
Our very first cuttings were successfully taken from this garden in Winter 2020!
The cuttings on the mist bench have begun to leaf out after less than three weeks! We are waiting for the roots now before we pot them up in their individual, gallon-sized pots.
