Wetland Plants Sending wetlands plants worldwide

Story & PhotoS by tyLer neWMan

Wander off N.C. 37 near Edenton for a few miles into the sparsely populated southeast region of Chowan County and one is sure to find the tucked away operation of Wetland Plants, Inc.

Founded in 1999 by former physician Ellen Colodney, the plant nursery is a 15 minute drive outside of Edenton along Drummonds Point Road, stretching from Highway 37 in the west to the namesake point along Albemarle Sound in the east. Roughly halfway down the road’s length is Wetland Plants.

Specializing in growing and selling wholesale plants for wetlands, stormwater and wastewater applications from Texas to Long Island, Colodney’s venture has recently seen a boom in demand, up to nearly a million plants transported out of greenhouses annually.

“Primarily, our plants are used for projects like new developments where they’re treating stormwater and they have to treat the runoff before it enters the receiving stream and the plants are a really effective way of doing that,” Colodney said. “We were over a million dollars in sales last year.”

When stormwater collects pollutants and harmful materials from roadways, parking lots and other areas, it can be filtered and cleaned by the plants.

Wetland Plants is perhaps the only local business-to-business nursery of this nature, with the next closest nurseries being hundreds of miles away. It is a unique and rare find among the rolling fields of agrarian Chowan.

“I got into it because I wanted to work for the environment,” Colodney explained. “I already had done everything I wanted to do as a doctor. There was such little knowledge of this field and we had to figure out all of this stuff. We didn’t have big financial backing so we built from the ground up.”

Step foot into one of the several greenhouses on the property and it aptly feels like one is walking into the Amazon. In one greenhouse, the temperature soars to 95 degrees, humidity soaking the skin and providing a perfect refuge for up to 70 plant species that are native to USDA Zones 7 and 8, across the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic.

The dense heat surging through the greenhouses becomes quite costly in the winter months as the mercury plummets and energy costs rise, however.

All of the infrastructure is on-site for anything the staff of roughly ten would need to grow the plants. From robotics built in-house to soil purchased locally and both the hands and minds to make it all work, the operation is impressive. Near the center of the property is a Starlink array, connecting to a satellite in orbit to provide broadband to the remotely-located business.

Each phase of the plants’ life takes place at Wetland Plants before being shipped to buyers the moment they are ready to plant, whether it be for a new construction project or a stormwater control measure, such as in New Bern, where 144,000 plants were shipped recently from Edenton. Sowing, transplanting, growing and shipping all happen on the lot of about seven acres just a couple of miles from the tranquil Albemarle Sound.

Shipping the plants is typically free in North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia, given the operation’s close proximity to the latter two, but can range from eight cents a plant to 20 cents a plant to areas as far as New York, Texas and Florida.

For many of the plants grown, it can take roughly two to three weeks to germinate, four to six more weeks before transplanting to a climate-controlled greenhouse and another month or so to reach full adulthood.

Recently, the nursery acquired new grow lights, able to convince infant plants that the season is spring while in the midst of the coldest month of the year.

“They have to be tricked into germinating,” Colodney said. “Because they have to be grown so that they’re available for our customers when their planting season begins and throughout that planting season. They have a limited list of plants that they can choose from.”

From lizard tail to fringed sedge and swamp sunflower to seaside goldenrod, each plant feels appropriate to its environment and can be managed in a massive database that tracks both growth and production.

Vice President Victor Agraz gave a tour of the whole facility, pointing out how everything works, down to the smallest valves and pieces of equipment. Commercial-grade Rinnai water heaters running on propane are the standouts, heating entire floors and pools of water to keep the plants rising skyward.

“We have the same number of staff now as about five years ago when they were selling 400,000 [plants],” Agraz explains. “Everyone here is good at something or multiple things and we work together to make it all work.”

Agraz points out 25-year-old John, knelt down in a dirty corner of the “hen house” (where seeds are sown) working on what looks like a piece of equipment.

Agraz notes that John hand-built much of the equipment using ideas from Colodney: electronics, greenhouse appliances, infrastructure and even the robotic seed sowers that Wetland Plants uses, calling him “brilliant.”

“We’re very lucky to have these younger people who know so much, John being one of them [as a facilities expert],” Agraz says, standing in a space large enough to hold 91,000 freshly sown seeds in propagation containers of 338 cells each.

The operation feels meticulous yet passionate, like a multitude of dedicated moving parts lubricated just right and with just the right amount of skill to pull off year after year of successful growth and sales.

Staff works in both hot and cold conditions year-round, as well as among numerous local critters that may wander into greenhouses, from snapping turtles to snakes, frogs and a few cats.

Over the years, efficiency and productivity has been maximized, allowing for more of a “living wage” for Wetland Plants’ handful of employees.

Colodney says she is proud of the work her employees have done.

“We have some really smart young people who can build and fix everything,” Colodney said. “I think everybody really likes working here. It’s very hard, very challenging and very creative.”

Tyler Newman is a Staff Writer for the Chowan Herald and Eastern North Carolina Living.