Offering healthy organic plants for the Willamette Valley.
About
Humming Bee Nursery offers wholesale organic plants to a variety of local stores, nurseries, and farm projects. In support of our regional ecosystems and food systems, we specialize in locally adapted, open-pollinated varieties of vegetables, medicinal herbs, and pollinator-friendly plants. We love plants, and we strive to provide our community with thriving plants that will succeed in the Willamette Valley.
Why Organic
We are proud to be one of the few certified organic nurseries in Oregon. Our certification ensures our customers that we are propagating our plants in organic, biologically active soil and feeding them with all natural amendments. We source almost all of our seed and planting stock from organic producers and lease land from an organic vegetable grower. Organic plants are more nutrient dense, safer to handle, and nontoxic to pollinators. Beyond being free of genetically modified organisms, we prioritize open-pollinated and locally bred seed to support public stewardship of plant genetic resources for future generations.
What Is OSSI?
We are proud to partner with the Open Source Seed Initiative, a nonprofit dedicated to maintaining fair and open access to plant genetic resources worldwide in order to ensure the availability of germplasm to farmers, gardeners, breeders, and communities of this and future generations. Find out more on the OSSI website.
By using OSSI’s “freed seed,” gardeners participate directly in the global movement to maintain free access to plant genetic resources. By buying OSSI varieties, you support the breeders, seed growers and seed companies that share a commitment to freeing the seed. Using OSSI-Pledged seed helps keep the food supply secure for future generations and assures that broad food choices and diverse genetics, developed often over thousands of years, do not become lost as restricted seed comes to predominate.
Varieties that are part of this pledge are indicated with “OSSI” and the plant breeder on the plant’s stake tag. We encourage you to save and share seed from these varieties in accordance with the OSSI Pledge:
Open Source Seed Initiative Pledge: You have the freedom to use these OSSI-Pledged seeds in any way you choose. In return, you pledge not to restrict others’ use of these seeds or their derivatives by patents or other means, and to include this Pledge with any transfer of these seeds or their derivatives.
The Bees
We’re really in love with bees! Honey bees, bumble bees, mason bees, and the dozens of others native bees that frequent our nursery and your gardens. In addition to planting as much as possible for pollinators, we keep honeybee colonies in Marcola and Corvallis. Working directly with social insects is humbling and inspiring, and we prioritize the health and longevity of the colonies before harvesting.
Our Name
What’s that moth in our logo? Our name is a play on a common misnomer for this magnificent pollinator, the White Lined Sphinx Moth, Hyles lineata. They’re sometimes called hummingbird moths because at first glance they look like hummingbirds flitting around the garden. In fact they are a relatively common but rarely seen nighttime pollinator. Besides its innate beauty, we chose this pollinator for our logo because it ignites curiosity and wonder about insects and their ecology. It also represents the complex relationships that humans have with insects, since the caterpillars of some moths can actually be garden pests. Getting to know and work with pollinators isn’t always easy, but it’s worth the effort!