Help Justin get his business to the next level

Hello friends and family, I have started this gofundme for my husband, Justin Maciulis, to help him bring his business (Nevada County Native Plants) to the next level. Justin needs a potting station and hoophouse. It's time to improve infrastructure.

Justin took a leap of faith at the pandemic's beginning and filed for his nursery license. Nevada County Native Plants. A specialty nursery niching in plants native to California, local natives, hard-to-find natives, and hyper-local verities.

With only 1,000 sq ft, he is propagating, cultivating Nevada county's largest selection of native plants. Enthusiasm by the community has been fantastic, and the business is growing. However, this summer, he experienced problems with wildlife. Rodents and birds were wiping out entire flats of seedlings and transplants. Justin's nursery is enclosed but with only deer fencing. It's time to improve my infrastructure. Justin has raised some funds and has cleared an area on our property, but now he needs a little help to finance these improvements. If you would like to see more of what Justin is doing, be sure to check out his Facebook or Instagram pages, both under Nevada County Native Plants. Thanks so much for your considation.

(From Justin's post)

A brief history of my yesterdays that builds to my tomorrow.

Age of 25, I enrolled in college for environmental horticulture, with no roadmap. Getting involved with the department I found myself really gripped with identification and propagation. As I was taking my propagation course, I also let go of 3 units and dropped a class cause I had no interest in ridiculous equations to apply pesticides to golfing fairways. When I went to my mentor, I said that class wasnt for me but I still need to squeeze units out of the department for my degree. My mentor introduced me to a independent study, that involved me with propagation, cultivation, marketing of native plants, and selling our stock with our local Redbud California native plant society chapter. At this time the big light bulb went off, and I was relieved to find something I connected with, and felt passionate about. After graduation, I started a native plant nursery called "AlterNATIVES nursery". I was growing small scale and also doing botany/conservation work.

Then I got kicked in the balls with testicular cancer. On top of that Ava was carrying our unborn daughter Dawn. During my treatment, I was unable to do many tasks. And had to let go of my stock and business.

That was 2006. Between that time I focused on raising my daughter, and still worked in conservation. This field work gave me a more specialized focus on the importance or regional hyper-local plants.