Godfrey plant lover grows Green Thumb Nursery business from home

May 10-GODFREY - Tom Shirrell's 14-year-old son calls him a "plant nerd."

"(Tristan) will hear me on the phone and say, 'Oh, you're talking with your plant nerd friends,'" says Shirrell, the owner of Green Thumb Nursery, who holds a biology degree from Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville and an associate's degree in horticulture.

Green Thumb Nursery, located in Godfrey, is a retail nursery specializing in native plants and plugs. As a member of Grow Native!, it offers a wide selection of native plants for the Southwest Illinois region.

Shirrell, whose full-time job is related to agriculture, runs Green Thumb out of his home in Godfrey's Rosemont subdivision. His back yard and deck are full of tables loaded with young plants, mostly seedlings, and almost all of them for sale.

Anyone interested can call Shirrell at (618) 531-3285 to make an appointment. He said a lot of his business comes from "word-of-mouth," as customers he meets at farmers' markets and other events tell their friends about his service.

"I've had garden clubs come over here and tour around," Shirrell said about his home business. "I think there's a garden club coming in mid-May for a yard tour."

Illinois native plants help monarchs, birds

Shirrell says he became interested in native plants through the late Gene Sands, a former biology teacher in the Alton School District and botanist. Sands did extensive work at the Heartland Prairie at Alton's Gordon Moore Park, where many native Illinois prairie plants are on display.

Shirrell also credits Ken Schaal, his main supplier of native local ecotype seed.

"Those two have been very influential in helping me get everything started," Shirrell said.

He stresses the importance of getting the right native seeds for our area, such as what he gets from Schaal.

"It's local ecotype, so it's well-adapted to our soils and our climate," Shirrell said. "For instance, if you get butterfly weed seed from Arkansas, it may not be as hardy as what would grow better here."

Homeowners who want to attract monarch butterflies to their yards by planting milkweed need to ensure they use varieties that thrive in Southwestern Illinois.

Monarch butterflies depend on milkweed plants in spring and summer for laying their eggs and feeding their caterpillars, but Shirrell points out that they need other sources of nectar in the fall, when they are migrating south.

"Milkweeds aren't blooming in the fall, so you need asters, goldenrods, and various other plants," he said. "(The monarchs) need fuel in the fall, so if you have nothing that they need in the fall, they don't have any fuel to make it.

"And a lot of other pollinators need the native plants."

As for attracting and helping birds ...

"The best tree that you can have for birds is oak trees," he said. "They attract the most kinds of caterpillars, and that's what the majority of birds feed their babies in the spring. So if you only have (non-native) Bradford pears, which only host maybe a couple of caterpillars, the birds don't have any caterpillars to feed their babies. So that's another important reason for planting natives."

Nursery owner sells native Illinois plants

Shirrell said he has sold native plants to Blackburn College in Carlinville and Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville.

Shirrell's back yard hosts a large variety of young native plants in small containers. He also sells trees native to Illinois, such as American basswood, hybrid oaks, and black gums. Green Thumb will have some scarlet oak seedlings ready for sale later this year.

The trees generally sell for about $45 each, Shirrell said, while seedlings for native grasses and flowers generally cost in the range of $3.50 to $7.50 each.

He pointed to a flowering plant called Savannah blazing star.

"Butterflies love that in August and September," Shirrell said. "If you have monarch butterflies in the fall, they will be on that. It's really beautiful."

Shirrell also owns some property on the northern edge of Alton, where he has been planting native vegetation along the roadside and in wooded areas he owns. He planned his plantings so that different species flower at different times throughout the year, providing a changing color show. Motorists sometimes stop, get out of their cars, and take photos of the flowers, he said.

Grow Native!, with which Green Thumb Nursery is affiliated, is the native plant marketing and education program of the Missouri Prairie Foundation. Grow Native! helps protect and restore biodiversity by increasing conservation awareness of native plants and their effective use in urban, suburban, and rural developed landscapes.

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