r/NativePlantGardening • u/ActinoninOut • 10d ago
Informational/Educational [DATA DUMP] 30 Yr Native Nursery Closed Down, I Saved EVERYTHING on Their Website
Hello,
Some of you will no doubt recognize this post (hi!), I'm a home grower living in Baton Rouge, LA/Zone 9a. And I heard tale that one of our FEW native nurseries, (Almost Eden) was going to be going out of business. And over the course of their careers, the owners had compiled really good information on thousands of different natives. I'm talking they had multiple pictures of each plant, dozens of growing guides, guides on how they ship online, just so so much stuff that they had created over their careers.
So with their EXPRESS permission, the owners, I used AI to trawl their website and download EVERYTHING into neatly organized Excel files. I'm talking one spreadsheet has over 10k images saved. Another has over a thousand rows of data on individual species. There's so much that I've barely even looked through it.
But I am a firm believer that we are at our STRONGEST when we share our resources and information. I hope this data will be of use to someone or some organization. And if not now, maybe in 10-20 years, provided this data is preserved in some fashion.
Also, PLEASE share this data with ANYONE you think might have use of it, if not now, perhaps in the future!
THANK YOU to Mr. Jeff McMillian and Almost Eden Plants!
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u/The_Dirty_Carl 10d ago
Please consider archiving it as a format other than excel. /r/Datahoarder can probably point you in the right direction
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u/flowstateskoolie Zone 8a, Georgia 10d ago
As a native nursery owner in north Georgia, thank you for doing this. So much information was just saved from being lost to time. Seriously, kudos to you!
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u/ActinoninOut 10d ago
Absolutely! It feels like a freaking crime to let all their hard work go to waste!
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u/your_moms_apron 10d ago
This is so great.
Please share with r/nolagardening as well as the LSU ag center!
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u/Careless-Ad1704 10d ago
If the website still exists, creating a HTML copy would be really, really helpful, as the overall flow would be preserved. There are several free programs that will do this for you (I haven't done this in years, so not sure which ones are the best choice currently)
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u/mittenmix SE MI , Zone 6b 9d ago
I take this to mean they are shutting down the website? Is there a reason they donāt want to leave the website with all the info up? I wonder if they would allow someone to take over the domain cost to keep it alive. Depending on what it is, I might be willing to do so, if only to keep the resource available.
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u/LaundryMan2008 10d ago
Consider uploading it to Archive.orgās wayback machine, Iād suggest emailing them so that they can as cleanly as possible get the website up and running on their system.
P.S. I grow native plants (my favorite being coltsfoot and burdock) and garden āweedsā as houseplants, Iāve only made rare exceptions for succulents and some fluffy plants
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u/CameHere4Snacks Area Coastal Rhode Island, Zone 6B 10d ago
When I lived in FL I ordered from them a few times. I always am so appreciative of people who work hard to provide natives on a commercial level because it is a true labor of love. I wish them the best.
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u/ActinoninOut 10d ago
Yes indeed! Their farm was so so impressive. But also sad:( They had medical issues and when I went, it was just so overgrown. I'm talking, they had 7-8 MASSIVE greenhouses just overgrown to the tits with weeds. They still had so so so many natives, but it just clearly got away from them
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u/AlltheBent Marietta GA 7B 10d ago
man, a component of native plant gardening I hadn't considered. very cool that you saved and compiled, sad they went out/closed, but glad
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u/Celestial_Squids 10d ago
I had no idea they were closing/closed. I am no longer in the area but had bought several plants by mail order when I lived down south. It was a wonderful company to deal with. Thanks for your work keeping the website info from being lost.
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u/devils__trumpet 10d ago
Looks awesome, thank you! Just a heads up, it seems like you included all the data twice-- there is an identically named zip file, inside the main zip file, that appears to contain the same files.
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u/jazzyvudulady 10d ago
This is great! Are they already closed? Did I miss the sales?
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u/ActinoninOut 10d ago edited 10d ago
Yeah they cut the sprinklers off like 4 or 5 weeks ago :( they still had thousands of plants when I went on their last day. Quite sad and honestly very surreal. Felt weird to be with these people as they literally shut the doors on the career long business.
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u/PerceptionUpper 10d ago
Hi this is amazing but also I was so excited thinking it was gonna have guides for PRODUCING native plants which is VERY different than growing guides for after purchase. I gotta stop getting my hopes up. If there is a data set present for production stuff that anyone could direct me to please let me know :D
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u/Barison-Lee-Simple 9d ago
Indigenous Landscapes published a book on setting up a native plant nursery. I don't know if it's still available.
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u/Botta-bean-law 9d ago
I immediately launched into finding the book and discovered they offer it for FREE online!
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u/redcaveman south central KS , Zone 7a 8d ago
It makes me want to cry thinking about such a business ending. Thank you for preserving what you can!
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u/holishitake 10d ago
This is absolutely amayzing!!! Thank you so much to the nursery and you, the one that thought about saving this information, took the time to make it shareable and sharing all of this greatness at no charge. It is so hard to find real information anymore. I canāt wait to read it all!
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u/Greystacos Area New Orleans, Zone 9b 10d ago
Aw man, I've been wanted to make the trip there but it's never lined up with my scheduled trips to Houston from New Orleans. Thank you for sharing
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u/WasabiTraditional862 9d ago
Thank you!! Great work and good thinking. Could you please post the archive.org link?
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u/zapmouse 10d ago
You should put this on archive.org as well :)