By Kevin Zuidervliet
I am not sure if we should start the story about water and its relationship with Octoraro Native Plant Nursery with guilt, but it’s the first thing that comes to mind. Every time the pump kicks on, I cringe with every drop that hits outside the pot, lands on gravel, or falls on a blade of grass. I feel like a robber. Stealing droplets from the cool quiet aquifers and spraying it somewhere hot and foreign where it is left to evaporate. The fact of the matter is if you are growing plants you are wasting water. Maybe the story should start with acceptance of that.
Sure, we use every trick we know in the book. Pulse irrigation, drip irrigation, watering early in the morning, recapturing the water, the list goes on. Let’s not forget hand watering. An old boss of mine told me it is the most efficient way to water “because who wants to stand out in the heat any longer than they have to?” Sometimes I think of an old boss’s advice to be like a greasy burger. It feels good at the time but later on it just doesn’t sit right. In this case it is because sometimes I just want to be in the heat at the end of the hose. I find moments like this are harder and harder to come by. It is what I internally refer to as “simple time.” During simple time, I reflect on big questions like, “What’s the most ethical use of water?” and “Is what I am doing making things better?” I try to tell myself that growing native plants that are destined to become towering stewards of our waterways is worth it. And I truly believe it is. Yet, the guilt is still there.
I find irrigation to be like many things: as complicated as you make it. And like many things the Goldilocks principle applies. You don’t want your irrigation to be simple, or too complex, you want it just right. Let’s take overhead sprinklers as an example. You have rows of trees that all need water and when you get a good soaking rain they are good to go for a few days. So a nursery owner has an idea: Let’s mimic rain. Simple! Set up a sprinkler. Let it run for an hour once a day and you can go home having done a job well done. I wish I could take certain nursery owners who employ this practice wholesale and beat them over the head with a wet newspaper. It is now common knowledge that 70% or more of water is wasted when overhead irrigation is applied to trees and shrubs. This is due in large part because the tree or shrub you are watering has leaves, which act as little umbrellas, gently splashing the water around the container and onto the weed fabric below.
Do we use overhead irrigation? Yes, but we have a rule about that at Octoraro. We do not use overhead irrigation when drip irrigation will do the trick. Drip emitters, or spray stakes, or umbrella stakes, or whatever the next marketing whiz is going to call them applies water directly to the soil. You run a supply pipe either on top of or next to your containers and then attach spaghetti tubing (called this due to its shape and plasticity) to the supply pipe on one end and a cleverly designed piece of plastic that works like a child’s thumb on the other. That is to say: if, as a child, you put your thumb over the end of the garden hose so that it sprayed out in just the right pattern to soak your sibling maximally then you have the idea of how these plastic emitters function. They either drip or spray micro amounts of water under the canopy of the plant, directly to soil and roots.
Watering with drip irrigation takes more time and investment in infrastructure. It takes more labor to take each emitter and stick them in the soil of 150,000 plants and then remove them when you ship those plants. It clogs more easily. You need better filtration systems. Is this system a pain? Yes. It is a pain that I have personally felt in my back after I have repaired the nth rabbit-chewed spaghetti tube in August. You know a pain I haven’t felt? Mass crop failure due to a well drying up. Do I sleep better at night using drip irrigation? Sure. Do I worry that our wells won’t make it through the summer? Same answer.
They are saying there will be an El Niño this year. I think that means hot and dry and droughts and extra strain on the wells. The reason I don’t know this is because I don’t want to look it up. Seems like bad news, and recently I have made it my mission to go the ostrich route with bad news—stick my head in the sand. Any person in horticulture is obsessed with the weather. I think it’s hope that drives this. We hope for rain when it’s blistering hot, we hope for sun when it’s overcast. Always hoping for what we don’t have. Here is something we should give up on hoping for: what the weather will be like next month let alone next season. El Niño? Maybe. All I can hope for is we are ready for it.
Can we think down stream for a moment? At our Kirkwood location all of our excess water drains down into “The Lower End”. Our name for a designed and an admittedly under-managed wetland complex on the banks of the Octoraro Creek. This wetland complex was put in around the early 2000’s and is now matured into a serene Spring peeper singing, turkey strutting, and mink scampering riparian woodland. It is one of the places I get to have simple time. Take the golf cart down and drive slowly through the river birch which provided a good crop of seed this year, gaze over the duck potato that was planted when we were called Octoraro Wetland Nursery, disturb the great blue heron that was hunting. It is a good simple time to contemplate on the impact of our plants.
Since the 90’s we have put out millions of native plants to the Mid-Atlantic region. That is a legacy worth being proud of. Are all of those plants alive today? No. Are enough of them stabilizing stream banks, feeding caterpillars, and providing other untold services to our ecosystem to make it all worth it? Sure. We are going to keep growing native trees and shrubs.
When my wife and I joined the ownership team at Octoraro in winter 2025, we committed to sustaining, preserving and growing the legacy that our co-owners started in 1990. We can’t stop using water if we want to repair the ecosystem that has been marred by generations of greed. We can use it wisely. We can use it in ways that give back to the watersheds and aquifers long after we are gone. Find ways to innovate, be responsible and aware of our actions, and feel guilt. That twinge of guilt is our conscience saying “be careful, use what you need, do good with what you have.” Do I feel guilt? Sure. Is the world a little better because of my guilt? Same answer.
Kevin Zuidervliet is a 2013 graduate of Susquehanna University with a degree in Student Development in Higher Education. He found his passion for horticulture in Australia and New Zealand, where he worked on organic farms for 6 months after graduation.
His professional career in horticulture includes managing a community garden while in AmeriCorps VISTA, completing the Professional Horticulture program at Longwood Gardens, working as a Nursery Horticulturist growing and propagating containerized trees and shrubs at Longwood for 3 years, designing and installing small gardens on the side, and eventually landing at Octoraro as the Head Propagator in 2021. He now works alongside his wife, Claire, as an Owner – Grower at Octoraro, where he endeavors to grow a sustainable, and successful business.
