The Master Watershed Steward program offers 3 annual fundraisers that can help make your yard Watershed-Friendly while supporting environmental projects and programs in your community!
Buy Watershed Friendly and Support the MWS
The Master Watershed Steward program offers 3 annual fundraisers: Native Tree and Shrub Sale, Watershed Friendly Plug Kit Sale, and Rain Barrel Accessory Kit Sale (see below). Proceeds are used to help our team implement projects such as water quality sampling, stream cleanups, the installation of rain gardens, public workshops on invasive plant control and stormwater management, youth education, and more.
Our Tree and Shrub Sale and Watershed Friendly Plug Kit Sale exclusively feature native plants. Native plants offer a variety of benefits to our communities, including environmental, social, and even economic benefits.
Native trees, shrubs, and other plants improve air and water quality, reduce stormwater runoff and pollution, and provide property enrichment and enjoyment. Other benefits include:
- Expands crucial habitat for pollinators, such as butterflies and bees, and countless resident and migratory bird species by providing nesting habitat and year-round direct and indirect food sources.
- Increases beneficial insect and wildlife diversity, including new-to-your-yard bird species that rely on caterpillars to feed their young, and plant features with multi-season interest.
- Requires less watering once established.
- Requires less fertilizer, saving both time and money.
- Stabilizes stream bank soil, thus preventing erosion
- Shades streams, keeping water temperatures cooler with higher oxygen levels, benefit fish and other stream organisms. Streamside trees also provide an important food source for stream life when leaves drop in the fall.
- Filters a portion of pollutants, such as chemical residue and road salt from paved surfaces.
Native Tree and Shrub Sale
The Annual Native Tree and Shrub Sale is an online pre-order sale allowing customers to purchase in August and pick up their orders in the fall. Each year, the program curates a different selection of native trees and shrubs to highlight based on watershed improvement goals, community interest, healthy stock, availability, and landscape needs. A Pennsylvania wholesale native nursery that strives for ecologically sound practices provides the species sold in either 1-gallon, 2-gallon, or 3-gallon pots.
Watershed Friendly Native Plug Kit Sale
Support local ecosystems and protect water resources with Watershed-Friendly Plant Kits, designed to help you add native plants to your property for habitat creation, stormwater management, pollution reduction, and other essential ecological benefits. Offered in partnership with the Penn State Extension Master Watershed Steward program and Nurture Nature Center, these kits align with the Watershed-Friendly Certification focus areas and make it easier than ever to enhance your landscape's environmental value. Focus areas include reducing stormwater runoff, reducing water pollution, conserving water, and supporting wildlife and pollinators. Native plants are woven throughout the certification criteria because of all the benefits that native plant gardens can provide.
Rain Barrel Accessory Kit Sale
Make your very own homemade rain barrel with an accessory kit. You can help your community reduce runoff, conserve water, and support healthier watersheds.
The kits include essential fittings, diverters, and connectors that can transform your own plastic container into a rain barrel. The barrel is not included. You will need basic tools and equipment for assembly.
All rain barrel kits must be pre-ordered for pick up at the offices below: Allegheny, Berks, Bucks, Cameron, Chester, Cumberland, Delaware, Elk, Franklin, Lackawanna, Lehigh, Luzerne, Monroe, Northampton, Schuylkill, Susquehanna, Westmoreland, Wyoming, York
