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Native Plants Resources
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Friends of the Acadian Forest Annual Plant Sale
We sourced many of the native plants that we planted during the Planting Futures Event at the Friends of the Acadian Forest Annual Plant Sale (June 7th, 2025) hosted at the KC Irving Environmental Science Center at Acadia University in Wolfville, NS.
They had a wonderful selection of native plants, as well as various booths with information from local organizations on how native plants can support biodiversity and mitigate threats caused by invasive species.
Check out their website here.
Photos from the EcoHope team's trip to the Friends of the Acadian Forest Annual Plant Sale. Image credits: Linden Thomas and Amy Mui.
Blue Spruce Nursery
The plants donated to us from the Ecology Action Center when we participated in a native plants gardening day and information session were sourced from the Blue Spruce Nursery. Located on Prospect Road in the town of Hatchet Lake, approximately a half hour drive away from downtown Halifax, the Blue Spruce Nursery has a large selection of native plants, as well as trees, shrubs and grasses and gardening supplies.
Check out their website here.
Blue Spruce Tree. Image Credit: Agnieszka Kwiecień, CC-BY 2.5, Wikimedia Commons
Baldwin's Nursery
We sourced many of our native plants, particularly the ones planted during our first planting event in Fall 2024, from Baldwin's Nursery. Located in Upper Falmouth, Baldwin's Nursery is a family-owned and operated business that has been selling a wide variety of native species, shrubs, trees, perennials and pollinator-friendly plants for 30 years.
Check out their website here.
Baldwin's Nursery Sign. Image credit: Amy Mui
Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center Native Plant Database
This database, associated with the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center at the University of Texas, was one of the resources we relied on the most when creating our native plant database. With over 9000 native species documented, this database is a great resource for native plant identification, ecological importance, growing conditions, native ranges, and medicinal uses.
Check out their website here.
The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower garden in Texas. Image credit: Larry D. Moore, CC-BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
In Defense of Plants Podcast/Blog/Book
The In Defense of Plants podcast has a lot of great episodes on native plants and their importance for ecosystems and biodiversity. You can listen to the podcast on the In Defense of Plants website or various apps like Spotify or Apple Music. You can also find blog posts and a link to buy the podcast host's book on the website.
Matt, the host of In Defense of Plants, also has a patreon that you can be part of starting at $1.50 CAD a month, where he posts extra episodes specifically about gardening tips. You can check out his patreon here.
Canada Goldenrod in EcoHope garden. Image Credit: Linden Thomas
Canadian Wildlife Federation (CWF)'s Gardening for Wildlife Program
The CWF is a great resource hub for learning about native plants, gardening tips, and how to garden in a way that supports native and migratory wildlife. See their website for information on how to apply for their garden habitat certification, how to be part of their iNaturalist gardening for wildlife citizen science project, where to buy native plants, how to identify native plants, and so much more!
EcoHope is so grateful for the support of CWF in certifying our pollinator garden near Dalhousie's Life Science Center (LSC) as a Wildlife Friendly Habitat, and kindly providing us with awesome stickers and temporary tattoos for our events!
Our beautiful CWF Certified Wildlife-friendly Habitat sign in our EcoHope pollinator garden. Image credit: Amy Mui.
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EcoHope Literature, Books and Courses
Below you will find some of the key pieces of academic and grey literature that the EcoHope team has used to support our research, our focus, and our goals. We have also included a recent undergraduate honours project from a student who was supervised by Dr. Georgia Klein, one of our EcoHope faculty team members.
Please contact ecohope@dal.ca if you have any suggestions for additional pieces of literature that we should include here.
Copy of From Screens to Stress Thesis FINAL.pdfFrom Screens to Stress: Exploring the Link Between Climate Change Communications and Eco-Anxiety Levels. A Dalhousie Case Study. By: Kathryn Bentley-Taylor
Written by a Dalhousie Environment, Sustainability and Society undergraduate student supervised by Dr. Georgia Klein, one of the EcoHope faculty team members, this honours thesis addresses the important link between climate change communications and eco-anxiety levels.
The author, Kathryn Bentley-Taylor, kindly gave permission for the paper to be distributed publicly.
An Educator's Guide to Climate Emotions Climate Psychology Alliance of North America
Written by a team of teachers, mental health professionals, and researchers, and reviewed by youth climate leaders, this guide is a great resource for educators to learn how to best support their students as they experience the range of emotions associated with learning about the climate and ecological crisis.
Click on the link to the left to download a copy of the guide (your email is required).
Active Hope
By Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone
Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We're in with Unexpected Resilience and Creative Power, is a book written by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone, which equips the reader with tools to face our social and environmental crises with resilience and creative power, building on an interdisciplinary knowlege base of mythical wisdom, modern science, spirituality and holistic science.
The Active Hope Foundation, a non-profit organization started by the authors, also offers a free virtual training program intended to help nourish your capacity to make a difference in the world.
Click on the link to the left to learn more!
Other Articles
Kurth, C., and Pihkala, P. (2022). Eco-anxiety: what it is and why it matters. Fronteirs in Psychology, Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology. 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.981814.
❃ This article is a great read for a comprehensive understanding of on eco-anxiety and why it matters. The authors analyze a broad range of articles on eco-anxiety through an interdisciplinary lens, using methods from emotion theory, philosophy, and environmental studies, finding that eco anxiety encompasses a range of environmental-related emotions, and can in some cases help enable positive actions.
Hickman, C., Marks, E., Pihkala, P., Clayton, S., Lewandowski, R. E., Mayall, E. E., Wray, B., Mellor, C., & van Susteren, L. (2021). Climate anxiety in children and young people and their beliefs about government responses to climate change: a global survey. The Lancet. Planetary health, 5(12), e863–e873. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(21)00278-3
❃ This article is significant because it is the first large-scale analysis of climate anxiety in youth and its relationship with precieved government response. The researchers interviewed 10, 000 children and youth in 10 countries across the globe on their their thoughts and feelings about climate change and government climate action.
Dean, A.J. and Wilson, K.A. (2023). Relationships between hope, optimism, and conservation engagement. Conservation Biology 37 (2) e14009 e14009. https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.14020
❃ This article analyses the tendency of conservationists and researchers to experience hopelessness and despair, and the capacity for hopefulness to propel them to achieve more meaningful results in their work.
Levis, C., Flores, B.M., Campos-Silva, J.V. et al. (2024). Contributions of human cultures to biodiversity and ecosystem conservation. Nat Ecol Evol 8, 866–879. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-024-02356-1
❃ This article explores the relationship between biodiversity and cultural diversity, particularly indigenous peoples and local communities (IP&LC), and how interconnectedness of these diversities may affect conservation outcomes. They use the interesting language of biodiverstiy "hope-spots" rather than "hotspots", emphacizing the hopeful capacity of IP&LC to advance biodiversity and ecosystem conservation.
Indigenous Ecological and EcoHope resources
In our work, EcoHope strives to highlight Indigenous traditional knowledge and perspectives, as these perspectives are essential to restoring a harmonious relationship with the natural world, countering eco-anxiety, and cultivating hope and joy.
EcoHope's copy of Lacey's book, Mi'kmaq Medicines: Remedies and Recollections. Photo credit: Linden Thomas
Mi'kmaq Medicines: Remedies and Recollections, and Medicine Walk: Reconnecting with Mother Earth (1999). Laurie Lacey.
Laurie Lacey is a naturalist, painter, writer and herbalist of Irish and Mi'kmaq ancestry. The EcoHope team has used the book Mi'kmaq Medicines: Remedies and Recollections, to inform our Native Plant Database and its sections on traditional indigenous medicinal and cultural uses of native plants. Lacey's other book, Reconnecting with Mother Earth, is a great resource for countering eco-anxiety and cultivating hope and joy, as it outlines exercises to control stress and experience the healing, calming abilities of being immersed in the natural world.
Click here to learn more about Lacey and his work!
Hopeful News Resources
We know from many different research studies that consumption of environmental news can often increase eco-anxiety, particularly because the news often focuses on stories that are terrible, scary and stressful, such as climate-fuelled natural disasters, food and water scarcity, extreme heat and species extinctions. Here are some news sources that focus on positive, solution-based and hopeful stories, that can help us stay informed while protecting our mental health.
CBC's "What on Earth"
What On Earth is a CBC radio show focused on solutions to our environmental crises. The show is available as a radio show, podcast, series of web stories, and weekly email newsletter. You can sign up for their email newsletter here, or click below for their radio show.
Image credit: Amy Mui.
The Daily Climate
The Daily Climate website is a publication of Environmental Health Sciences, a non-profit, nonpartisan organization focused on merging the divides between science and public policy. The website has a dedicated section on good news, which consists of articles written or curated by their editorial staff, all focused on hopeful climate stories.
Image credit: Lesbardd, Wikimedia commons, CC BY-SA.
Happy Eco News
Happy Eco News, founded by environmental activist Grant Brown in Vancouver, B.C., aims to counteract the constant influx of negative environmental studies that we are bombarded with. The newsroom focuses on positive stories of the changemakers working tirelessly to remedy our environmental crises, and the progress being made!
Their newsroom welcomes contributing writers and comments on their editorial content. You can reach out at editor@happyeconews.com.
Flowering Serviceberry Tree. Image credit: Linden Thomas
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