In 2025, Maine Audubon launched an exciting new project to develop four community tree and native plant nurseries around the state. These nurseries grow native trees that city arborists use to create urban canopyin Portland, Bangor, and Lewiston/Auburn. Our nurseries also grow a variety of native plants to be used in restoration projects in the cities we partner with and in Downeast Maine. These nurseries allow municipalities more flexibility and advanced planning in their purchasing for planting projects, and Maine Audubon is able to help source and grow native species which can be hard to find in the size and quantities these places need.
Similar to commercial plant nurseries, tree nurseries create space and infrastructure for small tree and plant seedlings to be grown along until they reach the size and self-sufficiency to be planted out in the communities they are intended to serve. This means we can source and purchase bare-root trees, which are less expensive and are available in a larger variety of native wild-type trees, and grow them to the appropriate caliper size. These conservation horticulture nurseries are overseen by City Parks and Public Works staff, managed by Maine Audubon, and supported via work study programs for teens from marginalized communities with help from numerous intercultural partners.
The project will also benefit from overarching oversight from Forestry Professor and Penobscot citizen John Daigle at the University of Maine, who will help ensure connections to forestry research and careers, as well as Wabanaki conservation values.
This project is made possible by a Project Canopy grant from the Maine Forest Service, who we are also excited to partner with on this important project.
Maine Audubon and Portland Parks have worked together on planting projects throughout the city for more than a decade. As a result, it was easy for us to identify the significant number of plants we use each year, and Portland City Arborist Mark Reiland anticipates that the city will continue to plant more than 100 large caliper street trees annually for many years to come. We had already experienced challenges in sourcing the species and sizes we needed for habitat and canopy restoration. Together, we approached our partners at Portland Arts & Technology High School (PATHS) to install a tree nursery for the horticulture and new outdoor leadership & education programs there. During the summer of 2025, Maine Audubon worked with our friends at Maine Association for New Americans (MANA) to enable paid opportunity for teens.
We work with Bangor schools, public works, and community groups to engage people in habitat restoration projects, so it was a natural fit to collaborate with then-Public Works Director Aaron Huotari, City Arborist Ben Arruda, and Forest Technician Sophia A. Cameron on the development of a community tree nursery. The nursery is on Finson Road, which has trees healed into the ground and planted in large gravel beds until they have grown into the large caliper trees that the city needs.
Our Fields Pond staff work with United Technologies Center, a career and technical high school in the Bangor region, to add tree nursery components to its vocational programs, and Maine Audubon hopes to develop summer teen stewardship programming with local community organizations as well.
We have helped engage youth and community leaders in habitat restoration throughout Lewiston for years, so when we asked Lewiston city arborist Steve Murch how Maine Audubon could support tree planting efforts, Steve was quick to suggest supporting a local tree nursery. The Lewiston Auburn Community Forestry Board, and particularly the municipal arborists for both cities, has established a productive field nursery at a site in Auburn. Together, we are working to improve the infrastructure of the nursery both for growing and for hosting groups looking to study the trees and how we grow them. Steve and his counterpart in Auburn, Noel Skelton, will use trees grown at the nursery for street and park tree planting in parks, schoolyards, and along streets.
Maine Audubon collaborates with Maine Community Integration (MCI), a local organization which empowers New Mainer girls and their families through a variety of social education and systems advocacy programs, on staffing and other support for programs engaging teens in conservation horticulture, civic engagement, and climate justice. Students taking part in MCI’s Sprout Lewiston summer program come to the nursery for a weekly stewardship project where they help weed, care for trees, plant, and prune. MCI and the teens who participate are a vital part of the operation of the LA nursery and improving urban canopy in their neighborhoods.
Maine Audubon has been concentrating on serving Washington County and the Downeast region of Maine better, and with the start of the 2024 school year, we marked the start of an exciting new partnership to further this goal. We teamed with our friends at Project SHARE (Salmon Habitat and River Enhancement) and Washington Academy, an independent high school in East Machias, to restore a conservation horticulture nursery which will engage students and the surrounding communities in producing native plants for nearby habitat restoration projects.
In January 2025, we hired a Community Tree Steward for Washington Academy to work with students and oversee growing the operation. We started our first batch of plants in the spring of 2025, and Project SHARE led the planting out of these plants—including dozens of species of perennials, shrubs, and trees—at several river project sites throughout the summer and fall.