Salt marshes are important for maintaining healthy and resilient coastal ecosystems as they remove nutrients, buffer storm surge, sequester carbon, control erosion, and provide habitat for wildlife. To combat erosion, shorelines have become increasingly ‘hardened’ over time through the construction of structures like bulkheads and seawalls. Alternatively, ‘living shorelines’ have been implemented as a nature-based solution that supports biodiversity, improves water quality, and are suited to handle long-term environmental conditions that cause hardened structures to fail within a few decades. One of the barriers to implementing living shorelines is the acquisition of sufficient plant materials and a trained workforce needed for marsh restoration work.

Two commonly used species that dominate salt marshes on the Gulf coast, are Spartina alterniflora (smooth cordgrass) and Juncus roemarianus (black needlerush). Marsh plants purchased for use along the Gulf are shipped as ‘plugs’ (small seedlings) and sourced from nurseries in Florida and Louisiana, with no large-scale nurseries that offer these species in coastal Mississippi. In 2024, the Mississippi State University Coastal Research and Extension Center has developed the Native Plant Producer Network (NPPN), a program aimed at increasing the stock of locally sourced wetland plants for use in small-scale restoration projects while simultaneously providing hands-on training, assistance, and networking opportunities to students, producers, and the public. To date, the project team has begun partnerships with three demonstration sites, eleven at-home growers, and nine local schools in Mississippi and Alabama. The NPPN team has participated in education outreach events reaching over 3,000 individuals, provided plants for small-scale restoration projects, is developing education materials for the public, conducting research, and planning more workshops aimed at recruiting new producers across the Gulf Coast to grow native wetland plants.