Native plant education, consultations & guided practice · St. Louis
Help the earth not die.
I’m Dan Pearson. I help people across the St. Louis region turn ordinary yard into an ecological refuge that asks a little less of you every year.
Welcome!
Hi. I’m Dan. I can't stop talking about native plants.
I’ve spent more than twenty years as an outreach educator, five of them directing St. Louis Audubon Society’s Bring Conservation Home program. Which mostly meant standing in a lot of strangers’ backyards, pointing at things.
I’m a Grow Native! Certified Professional. I can tell you what’s growing in your yard, which one of them is quietly plotting against the rest, and what to do about it. All without making you feel bad about the shrub your grandmother planted.
Mostly, I just like this stuff. An unreasonable amount. Ask me about Ozark witch hazel sometime!
Why bother
Nature doesn’t just live somewhere else.
We picture conservation happening far away: a prairie, a preserve, somewhere with a gate and a parking lot. But the caterpillars that feed baby birds don’t commute. They live where their host plants live. That could be six feet from your kitchen window, if you plant the right things.
A yard built around native plants drinks its own rainwater instead of sending it down the storm drain. It feeds birds you had no idea lived here. It needs less mowing and less watering. Almost nothing out of a bottle. And after a few seasons it mostly runs itself, which is the part most people are here for.
Two ways to work together
Come learn, or let’s walk your yard.
Education
Bring me to your group
Talks, trainings, and hands-on workshops for garden clubs, libraries, municipalities, real estate professionals, master naturalists, and kids who are really into bugs.
See the full lineup
Consultations
Walk your yard with me
A site visit, a clear plan, and an honest answer about what to do first, plus what can wait until next year, and what you can skip entirely. From an hour of ideas to a phased plan for the whole place.
See the options and prices
Receipts
He has, in fact, been doing this a while.
20+ years
As an outreach educator
Making ecology make sense to people who didn’t ask for a lecture
5 years
Directing Bring Conservation Home
St. Louis Audubon Society’s residential habitat program
Grow Native!
Certified Professional
A program of the Missouri Prairie Foundation
2022
Watershed Hero
River des Peres Watershed Coalition
2023
Conservation Organization of the Year
Awarded to Bring Conservation Home by the Conservation Federation of Missouri, during Dan’s tenure
Chair
Two regional steering committees
The St. Louis Native Plant Garden Tour, and the Partners for Native Landscaping Series
Professionally certified by Grow Native!, a program of the Missouri Prairie Foundation.
The name
Why “Indigo”
Two reasons, and I refuse to pick one. The indigo bunting is a small, absurdly blue bird that nests in the scrubby edge habitat most people mow down. And blue false indigo, Baptisia australis, is a Missouri native so sturdy and long-lived that one in the right spot will outlast the person who planted it. Both of them do good work at the edges, where nobody’s watching.
Let’s go look at your yard.
Show me what you’re working with, imagine the possibilities, and develop a plan to make it happen.