The Mother Farm

Mother Nature Provides

Our El Sobrante farm is the mother source for every plant we grow, providing all of the seeds and propagation materials for our Sobrante Park Nursery. Over a dozen formerly incarcerated staff members helped build this ecosystem, which also serves as a sanctuary for people getting out of prison to come home to a living wage job, connected to the land and the abundance of life it supports. Food from the farm is distributed for free to schools and low access places in our communities, and hundreds of people visit and volunteer each year through our educational programs to learn about perennial no-till agroforestry.

Extraordinary Biodiversity

The Mother Farm comes from a collection of 1,500+ plant species including rare and endangered species originally developed by permaculturists Corrina Cohen and Marc Robbi. When they sold Rolling River Nursery to Planting Justice, they trained our staff to become expert propagators and grafters who care for and multiply this extraordinary biodiversity. Now we continue to pass on this gift of life to our retail nursery customers and multiply the presence of these skills with holistic re-entry hires, paid youth interns, and volunteers.