The Garden grows many sensitive, rare, threatened, and endangered plants that have been listed as such by federal, state, and local entities. A number of these species have been successfully reintroduced into the wild from the Garden's living collection, and a few of our collections have been used to establish viable new populations of these endangered plant species.

Our best example is the federally listed endangered Antioch Dunes Evening Primrose (Oenothera deltoides subsp. howellii) for which the Garden has established two long-term self-sustaining populations in the wild on islands in California's delta.