About Us
Holly Magnani
Hello! Welcome to our nursery! I'm really excited to be able to provide quality native plants to the Greater Columbus area.
I've always loved plants, even as a kid. I would help my mom tend to our houseplants, veggie garden and landscape. My mom's brother, Walter, started a nursery in North Olmsted, Ohio with his amazing and glamourous wife Lottie, many decades ago and it was awesome. Since they've passed, the nursery has closed so it only seems fitting that I take up the mantle.
My husband Peter and I met through my mom's trees. Meaning, when I bought my house, I had some trees that were not doing so well. My mom reminded me that she had "a tree guy" and suggested I call him. Well, now I have a tree guy ... and a husband! We work very well together in our shared interests, while he leads in the landscaping and invasive species removal business, Native Landscaping and Consulting.
Peter Harrington
Aside from not liking his picture being taken, Peter is the owner of Native Landscaping and Consulting, LLC. His primary focus is to remove invasive species of plants that do not provide any food or habitat for our native fauna and then replace it with appropriate plantings for the land's grade and situation. He's not really into formal designs but prefers to let "nature take its course" when it comes to the plants.
We noticed that the species of plants that he really needed for customers' sites were not readily available in our area and he'd have to outsource that from a grower really far away, which adds to the impact on the environment. We started growing some plants here and were having success. It became necessary for us to branch into a plant nursery so as to be in compliance with the state's requirements for safe nursery practices. Instead of trying to do that all under the landscaping business, we started Somerset Native Plant Nursery in 2021 to provide those hard to find plants right here in the heart of the heart of it all, Columbus, OH, while being good stewards of the best practices of nurseries. We have been inspected by the Ohio Department of Agriculture and hold Nursery ID #250136, allowing us to sell plants to our community safely.
Our vision
Our intention is to offer smaller perennial plants and "plugs" to allow them to move around on their own. Some move through seeds, some move through rhizomes and some move through animals. Not much of this is under our control and that's fine. We like to watch Nature do what it knows is right.
We do offer larger plants in the 1 gallon liner size and up. These plants can provide an immediate habitat for critters, which then encourages them to stick around and live off the land. I enjoy watching the birds eat all the top berries off of our elderberry hedge from the window. Some swallow the berries whole, other peck and get berry juice on their beaks. The diversity that comes back our yard each year when the berries are ripe gives my soul a lift that I am doing what is right for our world in my own small way.
By educating our customers on how all these things work together, we can slowly make a difference in our own way with the land we have available to us. By reducing lawns and adding native plants, we can support wildlife that needs our help to survive, as well as reduce the environmental impact of tending to a useless monoculture.