Hey everyone! I'm Charlsie, the owner of Chickadee Natives, a native plant nursery in southeast Louisiana that focuses on preserving the genetics of our regional native plant populations. I'm asking for help to raise the funds to buy land so that Chickadee can get out of rental spaces and into a permanent, sustainable home.

I've spent the last 5 years searching out, monitoring and mapping native plant populations all over the Southshore and Florida Parishes. I record bloom and seed set times, note which populations are in danger of being lost due to development and collect seed from those threatened populations to ensure that their genetics remain in the seed bank. I also search historical records, then go out into the field to find those plant populations to see which have been lost, which have survived, and assess the condition of surviving populations.

I started Chickadee Natives on a farm in Washington Parish in 2020, and as a renter, staying in a sustainable growing space has been quite a challenge since! I lost access to that first space shortly after sinking my savings into it and landed in a small backyard in New Orleans.

I was able to grow a business there with a dedicated and supportive customer base, but with only about 500 square feet of growing space, I was never able to produce enough plants to make enough money to do more than just survive.

I spent thousands of dollars over the years building out various rental spaces, but I was often restricted by the amount of infrastructure I was allowed to put in, and I frequently lost thousands of dollars worth of plants to things like inadequate irrigation.

I spent the last two years trying to get business loans, but despite having excellent credit and being able to show high demand and little competition, I was repeatedly denied loans due to low income. But the low income was due to lack of growing space – the very thing the loan was meant to solve! Quite the conundrum.

In the early summer of 2024 I built out my final rental space, and I had more optimism than ever that this would be my ticket out of the backyard and onto land of my own. But due to an irrigation failure (again, I was not allowed to put in the real, reliable irrigation that a nursery needs), I lost $18,000 worth of plants. Just a few weeks later, Hurricane Francine flooded my backyard, killing much of the rest of my stock. I went into the fall of 2024 having lost 80% of my plants, and I was forced to take a hard look at things.

I've often heard it said that sometimes you have to take a couple of steps back to get a running start forward, and that resonates now more than ever. Losing so much of my plant stock that fall made me realize that a backyard and rental spaces with inadequate infrastructure were never going to get my business to the stable place it needed. I decided to get through one more spring season, then I would close and reassess.

I put Chickadee Natives on hiatus in May of 2025. I moved the remaining plant stock to my dad's house 5 hours away, uncertain whether they would live or die. I moved into my van to eliminate expensive rent payments and spent the summer and fall traveling, resting and recharging. While camping out in some of the most beautiful landscapes that our country has to offer, I wasn't inspired to get out my cameras and paints and capture the views all around me. Instead, I was inspired to plan my future nursery, and I spent nights wondering how the plants back home were doing.

I've spent this winter applying for grants, which I won't know the outcome of until late May and early June, and a number of friends and customers have encouraged me to start a crowdfunding campaign to go with them.

So I'm here today to ask for your help. I am hoping to raise $75,000 to buy a minimum of 5 acres of land on the Northshore and build out basic infrastructure. This will give Chickadee enough space to have a large, functional nursery, a sales area where customers can come shop in person and room to start getting stock plants in the ground for seed production. With land of my own, I will be able to put in the permanent, reliable infrastructure that a nursery needs to be sustainable, no longer losing thousands of dollars worth of plants because a water spigot got turned off.

With a real nursery space and the real income that comes from it, I will be able to purchase acreage in the future so that I can get into my next project and passion: restoration-quality seed production.

Chickadee Natives was never meant to be a small, backyard operation. It has always been my intention to grow on a large scale, making local ecotype native plants easily accessible in the quantities that home gardeners, landscapers, garden centers and land owners have been asking for.

Thank you to my amazing customers for their support over the years. I would not have made it this far without y'all! I am grateful to have such a supportive community around me, many of whom encouraged me to make this GoFundMe in the first place. Thank you to everyone who is willing and able to donate. Every little bit helps, and any amount that you donate makes a difference toward reaching this goal! Sharing on social media or with anyone who you think would be interested in this project is also a huge help!

With love and gratitude,

Charlsie