BlogYour market, updated
The natives your buyers are asking for
A trade survey last year reported that 82% of growers and garden centres said demand for native plants had risen over the previous five years. A separate industry survey found that only about 42% of sellers focus on natives. Taken together, those numbers describe a category that is underserved rather than crowded, which is unusual in this trade.
Why demand for natives is rising
Fashion accounts for some of it, but water and regulation account for more. Restrictions on water use are spreading across the South and West, and a landscape that has to survive on less water needs a different plant list, which tends to favour local species. Colorado's SB 24-005 restricts non-native plantings on a range of public and commercial properties, with effect from the start of 2026. Demand created by law does not soften when the economy does, and it comes with a date attached.
Industry summaries put helping the environment at around 70% of homeowners' stated motivation and keeping the yard easy at about half, and of the two, ease is the more durable. Most homeowners are shrinking the lawn rather than removing it, so the plants they want are the ones for the beds, borders and strips around it.
Why supply has not caught up
Demand moved faster than plants can be grown. Landscape designers report that sourcing some native species now means a contract grow, which can push a project out by a full season or more. A buyer who wanted a plant this spring needed a grower to have started it two or three years ago, before anyone could see the demand coming, so the shortage will probably persist well after everyone agrees it exists.
What a grower can do about it
What sold last season tells you about decisions made three years ago. Landscape architects know what is going into specifications now, and most will tell you what they expect to need in three years if you ask. A firm contracting for a species it cannot source is offering to carry a risk the grower normally carries alone, which makes a contract grow the better side of that arrangement. A crop with two years of lead time and few suppliers should not be priced like a commodity liner, yet many growers price natives off production cost out of habit.
Buyers also have to be able to find you. A landscaper who sources out of state usually does so because they could not find the plant locally, and where the main complaint is availability, a current list people can see is worth more than it would be elsewhere. In Sprout, the list your buyers see is your stock as it stands, through a shop link you can send to any landscaper. A short-supply line can be marked Private so only buyers you have approved see it, and each buyer pays the price for their own level, so a scarce native need not sell at the commodity rate. A small grower with one good native block gets it in front of the people asking, and a larger one keeps its contract customers first in line.
Where these figures come from
Most of the figures above come from trade press and industry surveys rather than from a census, and some have a commercial interest behind them, so they are better treated as direction than as measurement. The direction itself is hardly in dispute. Water is getting scarcer, the regulation is dated and public, and supply has not caught up with demand. Whether your own operation should respond depends on your ground and climate, and above all on what you already know how to grow, because a grower who chases a category they do not know tends to find out why the shortage existed.