TAMPA, Fla. — By helping local green thumbs grow happier healthier gardens, the Little Red Wagon Native Nursery is helping the state of Florida grow happier and healthier as well.
"At Little Red Wagon, we're putting Real Florida back into Florida," says owner Anita Camacho, a passionate environmentalist who takes an everyone-wins approach to the ecology.
The South Tampa business is the only nursery in Hillsborough County with a specific focus on growing and selling native plants.
"Most nurseries are selling predominantly exotic plants, and most people don't have a strong green thumb with those," Camacho says.
So they're forced to use chemicals, pesticides to help non-native plants grow, adding to a vicious ecological cycle.
Little Red Wagon is also the future home of the Butterfly Conservatory of Tampa Bay. Because of such native plants as milkweed, a lot of gorgeous butterflies, including endangered Monarchs. already call this home.
And that's very much the point. Camacho is also head of the Tampa Bay Butterfly Foundation, a nonprofit funded by the nursery and its various critters-galore summer camps for kids.
Besides being a working nursery, Little Red Wagon features a wildlife exhibit with snakes and lizards, plus an Earth-conscious gift shop.
Everything here works toward one goal: a healthier happier planet, for humans and butterflies and the rest.
"Nature needs what grows here naturally to survive," says Camacho. "And we need nature."
