Hi, I’m Emily,
and I grow native plants that help ecosystems thrive.
This journey started on a backcountry trail in the Pacific Northwest, where I first fell in love with the wild. I became interested in plants while serving on a backcountry trail crew with AmeriCorps in Washington in 2007. One day, I met someone whose job title was "Botanist"—and that simple word sparked a whole new path for me.
With support from AmeriCorps, I went back to school and earned a dual B.A. and B.S. in botany and sustainable agriculture from The Evergreen State College.
My academic training laid a foundation, but it was the field botany jobs that followed—summers spent counting, observing, and collecting plants in remote habitats—that taught me to read the landscape intuitively. I became ecologically literate not just through study, but through immersion.
GETTING TO THE ROOT OF THINGS
After years in the field, I shifted from wild spaces to growing spaces, taking on the role of Nursery Manager at Carolina Native Nursery. There, I deepened my understanding of large-scale plant production and the realities of the nursery trade—from propagation to logistics and everything in between.
In 2019, I co-founded Blackbird Landscapes, a design/build company focused on using native plants in naturalistic installations. I served as the lead designer and CEO (and, let’s be honest, also filled in every other role when needed).
But no matter how well we planned, we kept hitting the same wall: a lack of consistent availability of high-quality native stock. It didn’t matter the season—we could never get all the plants we needed to create true habitat-based designs.
So, I started growing them.
What began with shrubs, trees, and perennials filling every square inch of my home driveway eventually outgrew the space. By 2023, I moved into a commercial space in Mars Hill, and Tanager Plants was born.
"The scarlet tanager isn’t just a bird—it’s a symbol of the unseen threads that connect us all. Native plants are part of that web, and every species we return to the landscape helps stitch it back together."
— Emily Driskill
WHY THE SCARLET TANAGER?
I chose the scarlet tanager as the namesake for my nursery because it represents so much of what native plants are about—connection, beauty, and interdependence.
We often talk about native plants in terms of what they do for birds: they feed caterpillars, support insect life, and offer habitat. Birds like the tanager are easy ambassadors for conservation. But the truth goes deeper. Native plants don’t just support birds—they’re woven into a vast web of life that includes pollinators, insects, fungi, microbes, mammals, and humans, too.
The tanager felt especially meaningful to me. When I co-founded Blackbird Landscapes, we chose the red-winged blackbird as a symbol of our commitment to habitat restoration. The scarlet tanager carries that thread forward—with an inverse color scheme and a shared love of tall trees and forest edges, a trait I deeply identify with.
This bird reminds me daily that our work is never about one species—it’s about creating continuity and honoring the relationships that already exist in the landscape.