The Pollen Nation is a mail-order nursery providing quality plant material for your gardening palate. We offer a wide selection of perennials and grasses native to the Eastern United States, all grown as deep landscape plugs. No matter what your garden site conditions are, you are sure to find something that will suit your needs. Clay soil? Sandy or poor soil? Flooded or dry areas? We provide native plants that require little to no care after they become established.
What are plugs?
Deep landscape plugs measure approximately 2 inches by 4.5 inches, plus a few inches of growth on the top. The plugs allow for roots to establish quickly and can be planted directly in the landscape.
Why garden with plugs?
Plugs are an accessible and affordable way to garden with native plants. Using plugs allows you to purchase more plants for your dollar. Once planted, the strong healthy roots establish within a short period of time, and the plant requires little to no maintenance.
The deeper plug size allows for more root growth and prevents root spiraling, resulting in big and healthy plants.
Purchasing plugs is a great way to plant large amounts into your garden within a short period of time--all you need is a small shovel!
Placing an Order
Our shipping season begins in April and ends in October. Over the fall and winter, you can pre-order your plants for spring.
When placing an order, you must order at least 5 plugs of one type of plant AND a minimum of 25 plants. These will arrive in a cell tray and not individual pots. The reason we have this order minimum is so that you can establish plant communities instead of just individual plant collections. Bees and other pollinators are better at recognizing plant "communities," or plants that are in mixed groups, and thus are very drawn to them.
Discounts will be applied if you order 50 or more of one plant type.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you sell seeds?
We offer plugs only, in trays of 25 or more.
How can I contact you?
Reach out to us any time via email at sales@thepollennation.com or info@thepollennation.com. We can also be reached via Facebook Messenger or Instagram direct messaging. Since we are an online business only, we do not have a telephone number and are not staffed to answer phones.
Where are you located?
We are based in New Jersey; this is where your plants will ship from. However, since we are online only we are not set up for in-person nursery visits.
Do you use pesticides?
The Pollen Nation is committed to providing healthy plants free of pests and disease. Horticultural oils, soaps, and biological controls are always our first choice. Rare and extreme situations may require the use of conventional horticultural chemicals, though their use is strongly avoided. Neonicotinoids and other systemic chemicals are NEVER used.
How will my plants arrive?
Each order is carefully packaged by hand, wrapped in paper before placing in a ventilated box. Plugs are shipped in trays with 2x4.5 inch cells.
I'm ready to check out, but I don't see my state on the drop down menu!
Unfortunately we are not able to ship to AK, AZ, CA, CO, ID, MT, NM, NV, OR, UT, TX, WA, WY, or Canada. Though some of our plants might be native to certain areas in these states, national regulations forbid us from shipping live plant material to these areas for various reasons.
When will my order ship?
The first 100 orders received after our season ends in October, begin shipping out in April. The local temperatures dictate when our first shipping week is. This information is always posted on our homepage, and is regularly updated. The next group of 100 orders are shipped out during our second ship week, and so on. If you order plants at the end of March, they will not ship immediately the next week. We are a small business with a small team working hard to send orders out in the order they are received.
Most plants we offer are available right when the season starts, but sometimes certain plants are not ready for shipping until a later date. You can still pre-order these, but they will not ship until their release date. Some plants do not break dormancy until late spring or early summer, hence the later release date.
If your order is due to ship out 1 or 2 weeks before the release date of a plant you have on order, the entire order may be held until everything is ready to ship. You can always reach out to us if you need specific information on when your order will arrive.
How can I change my order after I already placed it?
Send us an email and we would be happy to switch out any plants for you, as long as the quantity is the same. Due to how our website is set up, you cannot add any additional quantities of plants after the order has already been placed. This is because our E-Commerce platform does not store your credit card info for us to access, therefore we cannot charge your card and add more items to your order.
How can I be sure that payment is secure?
All purchases are processed through BigCommerce. BigCommerce provides a secure shopping experience for customers by keeping their security systems up to date with the best practices. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is an information security standard that organizations must adhere when handling credit and debit card information. You can find out more on their site.