In 2001, as part of the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan, County staff wrote and prepared a proposal for a Native Plant Program that would minimize some of the more harmful impacts of urban development on native plants and plant communities and address some of the problems that public works departments had found in obtaining appropriate plant material for projects. Since then, Pima County has put many of these ideas into practice, including creation of the Native Plant Nursery that has provided tens of thousands of native plants for County public works projects.. All of the plants grown by the Native Plant Nursery end up in public spaces. At present, there are over 20,000 plants being grown for a variety of public projects, representing over 200 different species.
