He spent the next 27 years growing orchids. He got good at it. Sea oats may not sell at retail, but if you bought an orchid at a Lowe’s or Home Depot near the start of this century, there’s a good chance Hayden had something to do with it. Six years ago, he started working with sea oats.

“You know, everyone says orchids are very difficult,” he said. He gestured at the greenhouse full of sea oats. “This is … many sleepless nights.”

The complicated nature of sea oats begins with their parentage. Sea oats are protected in Florida, so EarthBalance needs the permission of landowners — sometimes a state or local government, other times a condo association — to harvest. Harvest season is a narrow window, about a month in September or October. Field crews collect panicles, the golden-brown seed heads that give Uniola paniculata its common name. A large panicle with many spike-shaped seedpods may contain only a single seed.

EarthBalance dries the panicles and sends them to a company that “cleans” them, separating the seed by tumbling it in a piece of equipment. This is a delicate process, Hayden said: “The seed has a little tiny embryo. If it gets broken off, the seed is no good.”

Even when done carefully, by the end of the cleaning process, 10% of the collected seed might be viable, Hayden said. It’s then that his expertise takes over. He knows how long in cold storage will give the plant the best chance at germinating (three to four months). He’s devised a precise schedule of hand-watering and nutrient use, and he can tell how healthy they are by running his hands through the sprouting stems or glancing at their roots.

He designed both the nursery’s fertilization apparatus and its decidedly low-tech bird-protection system: aluminum pie-tin sentries with billowing streamers and googly eyes. And he is constantly watching for signs of the fungal and insect-borne diseases that, if left unattended, can wipe out a greenhouse full of young sea oats.

Harvesting a seed and growing it into the 10- or 12-inch-tall plant a buyer wants takes about six months. The urgency of the Pinellas dune restoration project meant growing plants in the winter, when the process is at its slowest.

“It’s a living plant,” Laroque said. “We can only make them grow so fast.”

The line of defense

After decades of growing coveted flowers, Hayden said he considers cultivating sea oats and other native plants his contribution to a bulwark against environmental degradation.

“There’s so many people moving to Florida, and they want to be part of Florida,” he said. “But Florida’s disappearing, the natural environment of Florida. And it’s the beauty that’s disappearing every time you put in a house and concrete.”

EarthBalance’s work, Laroque pointed out, is part of a decadeslong shift in large-scale environmental management philosophies, which have gone from trying to hem in beaches with jetties and sea walls to renourishing them with fresh sand and plants.

That story’s next chapter is unfolding. Climate change caused by human carbon emissions will mean more frequent, more destructive hurricanes reshaping coasts. Pinellas County’s ongoing standoff with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over its renourishment policies has underscored the precarity of life on the barrier islands, which, without the beaches’ protection, are vulnerable even to routine winter storms.

After Hurricane Ian ripped through Florida, it boomeranged back into the South Carolina coast as a Category 1 storm. In Myrtle Beach, it carved open dunes EarthBalance first planted in 1998. For Laroque, it was an unusual chance to see a cross section of work from long ago. Where only the tips of plants had been visible, she now saw stalks as tall as a person.

“We could see all the root nodes,” she said, “all the way down.”

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