Mission
Climate Ready Plants is a collaborative multi-state research program that trials ornamental plants across the climate gradient of the Western US to support resilient landscapes by identify plants that perform well in both current and future climate conditions.
About the project
Initiated in 2020, the Climate Ready Plants program extends the trial protocol developed by the University of California Landscape Plant Irrigation Trials (UCLPIT) program to new sites in Arizona, Oregon, Utah and Washington. The UCLPIT program began evaluating an ongoing plant trial program searching for low water-use species since 2004. Unique to this project is evaluating plant performance under multiple levels of deficit irrigation to identify high performing low water-use plants for Western landscapes.
Landscape Plants
The initial iteration of this project focused on evaluating the basic building blocks of landscapes: grasses, perennials, and shrubs. Each of the six sites was planted with a mixture of species. Some species were planted project wide to compare performance across the climate gradients. Selected species were grown regionally and shared amongst 2-4 sites with similar climates. This provides the means to compare how a plant is doing at climate analogues, e.g. Portland, OR vs Seattle, WA. Lastly each site had a selection of species that was unique to that location.
Vines
The current iteration of the Climate Ready Plants project is evaluating vines. As cities warm, finding means to shade people and structures will be a key means of keeping urban areas livable over the comming century. Vines offer the potential to shade buildings and through the use of structures, a means to shade people. The Vines trials are ongoing with data from the first year of experiments set to be released in early 2026.
Grant Funding
“Funding for this project was made possible by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service through grant AM190200XXXXG005. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the USDA.”
Cooperators
This project has been made possible by generous support from the industry and other institutions:
- Everde Growers
- Star Roses & Plants
- Darwin Perennials
- Spring Meadow/Proven Winners
- Bailey/First Editions
- University of Florida