25 Years of Partnership

Part of our $25 for 25 Anniversary Series — explore more stories here. 

For 25 years, partnerships have turned a shared love of Florida’s wildflowers into real change. Now we’re inviting you to be part of what comes next.

A healthy environment doesn’t happen by accident. It requires a diverse mix of species where bloom and fruiting seasons overlap, structure varies, and each plant plays its own role in supporting the whole. This is vital to creating a vibrant habitat that pollinators and other wildlife depend on. The same principle has shaped how we’ve grown. Over the past 25 years, the Florida Wildflower Foundation has built its impact not by working alone, but by cultivating a diverse community of partnerships — with each organization bringing something different to the mix, helping us widen our reach on behalf of Florida’s native wildflowers.

Deep Roots

Partnership is truly a part of our organizational DNA, as our roots grew out of a committed collaboration between the Florida Federation of Garden Clubs (FFGC) and the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT). To get our State Wildflower license plate on the road, FDOT provided seed funding, which FFGC grew through statewide advocacy and volunteer efforts. Those ties have remained strong over the years. Today, we host the website for FDOT’s Wildflower Program and work with state and local transportation authorities through our roadsides efforts as well. FFGC is a steadfast advocate of our work and has remained invested in our success. They have a designated liaison on our board of directors, a role filled by an FWF founder, Carolyn Schaag, up until 2023, when she selected Mona Johnston as her successor. In turn, we serve on FFGC’s Paths of Sunshine award committee, which recognizes outstanding roadside native plant and wildflower management, and we provide education to and for their club members.

Another early partnership that has blossomed into something truly exceptional is our collaboration with the McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity at the Florida Museum of Natural History. Beginning in 2006 with a $90,000 grant, we helped support their pollinator garden and educational materials, including an online Florida butterfly directory and in-person displays at the museum. In the years since, we’ve worked steadily with Dr. Jaret Daniels’ lab across a wide range of research projects — from the value of roadsides as pollinator habitat, to the impacts of native versus nonnative landscaping, to enhancing wildlife habitat in urban areas, and landscape maintenance practices for urban greenspaces. We’ve also supported the Center’s popular butterfly and wildflower brochure, helping produce and update it, and most recently, we’ve supported their highly successful Plant for Pollinators initiative.

Building the Structure

FWF has always been committed to increasing the availability of native plants in the nursery industry and for restoration work — an effort that requires strong collaboration. To this end, we work very closely with the Florida Association of Native Nurseries (FANN). Over the years, we have cohosted professional development events for the industry and relied on their valuable guidance for many of our resources and programs. We’ve also collaborated on content for FANN’s Real Florida Gardeners magazine, including the development of 10 Easy Wildflowers — a piece that would evolve into our most popular resource, 20 Easy-to-Grow Wildflowers. FANN also provides one of the most important tools we rely on to help the public access native plants: www.PlantRealFlorida.org. This online resource connects native plant providers directly with customers and is always our go-to link for folks looking for native plants. Whenever relevant, we also link directly to their species’ availability in our extensive library of plant profiles.

The Florida Wildflower Seed Growers Cooperative is another organization that has been critical to growing native plant availability, primarily through seed farming, and we’ve been linked since their founding. Thanks to the Foundation’s early success, the popularity of the State Wildflower license plate, and generous support from the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, we were able to get the Cooperative started.  Cooperative founder Terry Zinn has been integral to growing the Foundation through his service on our board. The Cooperative has supported many of our programs by donating seed for giveaways, and we often work with them to sell their seed at events. The Cooperative has also been integral to our newest collaborative endeavor, the Florida Native Seed Partnership. Their decades of experience in growing seed and navigating the economic markets have positioned them as a leader in this effort.

Filling the Niches

In the ecosystem of Florida’s conservation organizations, we each fill important niches that, when working together, help us accomplish so much more than we could on our own. One of the key roles played by the Foundation, as the recipient of the State Wildflower license plate funds, is to support the important work of other organizations. In the past, we have worked with the University of South Florida’s Atlas of Florida Plants, supporting their work to increase herbarium specimens. We also have a longstanding relationship with the Institute for Regional Conservation, primarily supporting their Natives for Your Neighborhood online tool, which continues to grow beyond its original South Florida focus to statewide utility.

One of our most natural partnerships is with the Florida Native Plant Society (FNPS), as our contrasting organizational structures allow us to work harmoniously toward similar goals. Through their chapters, FNPS has a large network of passionate people working to protect native plants in their communities. Our ready-made brochures and guides are ideal resources to help them in their educational outreach. We are also proud sponsors of their conferences and have collaborated on many programs over the years, from field trips to roadside wildflower monitoring. At the 2022 FNPS Conference, we launched an internship to provide opportunities for college students and emerging young professionals to work on native plant conservation and education projects.

More recently, we’ve teamed up with Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden to support research, planting and education through their Native Plant Network. This past summer, they hosted their first FWF fellowship intern — a program that offers hands-on field and research experience to young people interested in botany, nurturing the next generation of native plant protectors.

A Thriving Ecosystem

Featured here are only a handful of the strong partnerships we’ve cultivated over the past 25 years. The Foundation has fostered collaborative relationships with many groups across the state, from botanical gardens to municipalities, schools and universities, other non-profit organizations, and beyond. We are committed to being a productive component of a thriving ecosystem that protects Florida’s natural heritage.