Kelly Strope hopes to improve the region's ecosystems one native plant at a time.

Last year, her nursery, Arcadia Natives, sold over 14,000 perennials, shrubs and trees to gardeners looking for plants native to Western Pennsylvania. This season, she's on track to sell lots more. Not bad, considering just a few years prior, she didn't even know what that meant.

“I knew nothing at all about native plants when we moved here,” she said.

Here, she explained, is the 22-acre wooded property her family owns in Washington, Pa. During nature walks seven years ago, she was intrigued by several blooming plants in the woods and near the pond on her property. She researched these flowering plants, including the tall, daisy-like cutleaf coneflower (Rudbeckia laciniata), common milkweed (Asclepias syri

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