Native American Seed is a seed
propagation farm and seed cleaning and sales business, located a few miles from
Junction, Texas. The 262-acre property includes a mile of frontage on the Llano
River—the source of irrigation water for the 60 acres devoted to cultivating
native plants for seed. In addition to the farm’s riparian habitat, the acreage
encompasses bottomland hardwood forest, an alluvial flood plain and uplands.
The business is owned and operated by two generations of the Neiman family—Bill
and Jan, who founded it near Dallas in 1988 and relocated it to Junction in
1995, and their children Emily and Weston. After finishing college and working
briefly elsewhere, Emily and Weston have returned home to work with their
parents. The Neimans harvest seeds not only from the plants they cultivate, but
also from widely scattered remnants of the prairie, and their business is the
foremost seed source for numerous plant species native to the ecosystems of
Texas and surrounding states, including those of northern Mexico.
If you farm or ranch and are restoring native plants to
your landscape for wildlife habitat and livestock forage, you’ve probably
bought seeds from the Neimans. If you live in the city and cultivate native
plants on your property or are involved in native plant projects in parks and
other spaces, you’ve probably bought seeds from the Neimans, too. And if you
attend conferences of conservation organizations, you’ve probably heard Bill
Neiman speak about native plants and his long and varied work with them.
By Pamela Walker, author of Growing Good Things to Eat in Texas: Profiles of Organic Farmers and Ranchers across the State
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