ABOUT OUR NURSERY

The Forest Exchange is a nursery producing trees and shrubs for agroforestry practices.

We offer bare root tree seedlings and cuttings of plants with exceptional traits for food production, cold hardiness, climate resiliency, and genetic diversity.

We believe that perennial food sources will play a vital role in a future

that is resilient to climate change. These plants help us to imagine abundant futures

where food literally falls from the sky.

The nursery is located on the north-western edge of the Catskill Mountains of NY, in a valley where the Susquehanna and Delaware watersheds meet.

We have both spent all our lives in these two watersheds, which have been tended to for thousands of years by the people of

the Lenape Nation and Haudenosaunee Confederacy.

Agroforestry

Agroforestry incorporates trees and shrubs into otherwise annual agricultural landscapes.

The peoples of the world have been using these practices for millenia to keep their animals fed and shaded, their streambanks stable, and their homes heated, all while supporting thriving pollinator networks, and of course - producing massive volumes of nutrient dense food.

Today, the USDA outlines five key agroforestry practices:

windbreaks
riparian forest buffers
alley cropping
silvopasture
forest farming

All of the plants we grow are suitable for at least one (and likely multiple!) of these practices. Learn more about agroforestry from the USDA here.

Our Offerings

We offer one and two year old bare root seedlings and hardwood cuttings from carefully selected, time proven cultivars. Some are named (Thomas black walnut, and Wyldewood elderberry for instance) others are exceptional wild specimens.

We grow our plants in air prune boxes or in deep, nutrient rich in-ground beds. We encourage biodiversity in our nursery, including beneficial insects and fungi in order to minimize the use of external disease and pest management inputs.

We primarily sell wholesale to farms, garden centers, and landscape designers. Because of our growing methods, we are only able to move plants in late fall and early spring when they are dormant. The farm is not open for retail sales at this time. Sign up for our newsletter to hear about occasional pop up plant sales!

Some of the plants we grow:

hybrid chestnut
hybrid hazelnut
oaks, (burr oak, white oak, northern red oak)
hickories (shagbark, pecan, yellowbud)
black walnut
butternut
american persimmon
thornless honey locust and black locust
osage orange
northern hardwoods (maples, black cherry, ash, birch)
willow (varieties suitable for basketry)
American elderberry
American black currant

Visit our 2024 sales page to purchase our plants for your farm, business, or homestead!

For wholesale inquiries, please complete this form and we will reach out directly!

About Us

The Forest Exchange is owned and operated by Cameron Wygent and Rhiannon Wright.

Cameron leads seedling production in the nursery. He has worked as a nursery tech in commercial nurseries, public gardens, and apple orchards. He brings a deep understanding of northeastern forest ecology to the nursery. You're likely to find him in the forest studying the interactions between flora and fungi, or in his shop building a windsor chair, table, or banjo.

Off the farm, he is a nurse at our local nursing home.

Rhiannon leads cutting production in the nursery, focusing on willow, elderberry, and currants. She is a fiber artist (becoming more enamored with willow every day!) and a learning herbalist.

Off the farm, she is a program manager at a nonprofit ag business incubator, CADE, leading land access and regenerative practices programming. Rhiannon also has experience as a farmers market manager, and has a B.S. in Community Development from Temple University with a focus in Sustainable Food Systems Planning.

She is a leader of the Catskills chapter of the National Young Farmers Coalition.

Through The Forest Exchange, we hope to provide plants that will feed and shelter you and unknown beloveds for generations to come.