Elliott Conrad, owner and founder of Pipilo, started the business after an obsession with growing native plants left him with more natives than space to plant them. He has a background plant biology, restoration, and aerospace engineering (look, it made sense at the time). He even did a little stint in the military, just to build character. 

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Brian McHale, business operations and partner, handles delivery, logistics, customer service, sales and purchasing, and similar non-planty scenarios. He provides a share of the photography for the site.

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Pipilo Native Plants was named after our local resident of the genus Pipilo, the spotted towhee. This handsome bird relies on native plants for food and shelter, and so to find one you'll generally have to venture a short distance outside of town (at least for now). They especially enjoy the dense tangle of stream-side thickets. In the spring males can be found trilling from the tops of hawthorns and chokecherries to claim them as their own, and often you'll hear them scraping through leaf litter in the search for food.

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Our business is located in Charlo, Montana in the Mission Valley.

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