We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Leslie Boorhem-Stephenson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Leslie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. So, one thing many business owners consider is donating a percentage of sales or profits to an organization or cause. We’d love to hear your thoughts and the story behind how and why you chose the cause or organization you donate to.
We are happy to donate a portion of sales from our Lady Bird Johnson Legacy Wildflower Seed Mix to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, Texas so that they can administer seed grants. These grants pay for seed for an educational or community organization to plant a native plant garden to support pollinators and teach kids about ecology. Education is a huge part of our mission to help people restore the earth. We understand that we must help steward the next generation to love mother nature and to restore habitats that create clean air, fresh water and healthy soil. We have a long history with former First Lady, Ladybird Johnson, and the seed mix was created because these are some of her favorite wildflowers. We hope to carry on her legacy of restoration and give educational organizations the gift of learning and wonder through native plants for years to come.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Native American Seed and Neiman Environemnts are committed to helping people restore the earth with native seed. We started as a traditional landscaping company until our founders Bill and Jan Neiman had a major paradigm shift. They realized that their beloved home state of Texas is running out of water and traditional landscaping was sucking our aquifers, rivers and streams dry. They pivoted to carrying all native plants in their nursery and began harvesting native seed from prairie remnants. They realized you can do the most good in the most efficient way with native seed and made the move to the current farm headquarters in Junction, Texas. We grow about 40 – 50 species of native plants on our farm and source another 80 – 100 from other trusted growers to offer a comprehensive list of often hard to find native seed to our customers. We also offer ecological restoration services and have a fleet of specialized equipment ready to mobilize when the time is right. We are proud to have proprietary seed mixes free of invasive species and tailored to specific restoration needs like erosion control, pollinator support and riparian stabilization.
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
We have responsive and knowledgeable customer service in an industry that doesn’t have a ton of straight forward information. We spend a lot of time and resources making sure our customers are prepared with realistic, experienced based guidance. Planting native seed can be complicated and we are proud that our staff can guide folks through complex issues and timetables. We gained trust from the landscape architect and nursery/landscape community through attending conferences and being a valuable resource to their teams on the ground. NAS has been around a long time and has a large community of supporters like Native Plant Society of Texas and Texas Master Naturalists that understand the importance of local plant communities doing their ancient duties. They have helped immensely in building our reputation as an honest and honorable company.
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
Word of mouth and personal recommendations are indispensable to our social media presence. Native plant momentum has been growing steadily but has exploded recently! All of our content is based in sharing knowledge through storytelling. Our customers are amazing. We are lucky to have a hungry and passionate audience that shares our content readily. Sharing our customer success stories are also a huge boon to our social presence so we encourage all of our sales staff to ask for photos and to follow up with interesting projects. Many new followers come from our partners (retail stores and conservation groups), who believe in our offerings after having successful plantings.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.seedsource.com
- Instagram: @nativeamericanseed
- Facebook: Native American Seed
Image Credits
Leslie Boorhem-Stephenson