Nursery Info 

Nursery is open by appointment only Monday through Friday 9am-4pm. 

Email, Call, or text Emily at TanagerPlants@gmail.com / (828)380-2768 for more information. 

About the Founder

Emily Driskill is an alumna of The Evergreen State College where she earned a B.A./B.S. with concentrations in Botany and Sustainable Agriculture.  Through seasons of botany fieldwork in the Pacific northwest, the western Rockies, the southern Appalachians, and the mid-Atlantic coastal plain, she has gained a loving familiarity with native plants and their roles in the ecosystem.  Over the years, Emily has realized that the native flora she initially worked with as a botany student is incredibly important in the human landscape as a building block for habitat.  The environment we cultivate in human spaces holds importance far beyond our own species, and in the modern day, native plants need guardians and proponents as part of the larger ecosystem working daily to keep us all alive.  

Emily has been working in production horticulture since 2016 and began her professional propagation experience as the former nursery manager at Carolina Native Nursery.  Emily founded Tanager Plants in 2021 as a response to the great need for native plant material in the region for landscape installations.  She has an interest in plant propagation and in particular is growing as many species as possible from seed.  In addition, she scouts and ethically collects local seeds throughout the year in an effort to offer as many regional ecotypes as possible at the nursery.  As a wholesale business, Tanager caters to landscapers, independent garden centers, and other nurseries.  Tanager’s retail sales efforts also increase every year and Emily can be found selling plants at a number of local events every spring and fall, including the Botanical Gardens at Asheville plant sales, the NC Arboretum plant sales, and Growing in the Mountains.  Before Tanager came along, Emily co-founded Blackbird Landscapes in 2019, where she still works part-time as a landscape designer and plant buyer.