We host free monthly tours of residential native plant gardens or local plant communities from May – August.
May 2019
Wildflower Appreciation Walk and Garlic Mustard Pull
May 15th 5-7 pm
Riley Creek Conservation Area
9795 Canopy Trail (just off Laforet Drive), Eden Prairie
May 15th 5-7 pm
Riley Creek Conservation Area
9795 Canopy Trail (just off Laforet Drive), Eden Prairie
|
Riley Creek Woods Conservation Area is a beautiful woodland filled with wildflowers, ferns, and sedges.
Each week in May you will see a succession of blooms from wood anemone to Jack in the pulpit and wild blue phlox. This area is being threatened by a non-native noxious biennial called garlic mustard. Each plant can produce thousands of seeds. The plant changes the soil chemistry so that the environment is only favorable to garlic mustard. If the spread of garlic mustard is not checked, instead of healthy biodiversity that supports birds and other wildlife, we will end up with a monoculture. Join us to learn about native wildflowers and to recognize and remove garlic mustard. Bags will be provided. Please bring your own gardening gloves. Tour of Wood Rill Scientific and Natural Area
Rescheduled May 26th 10 am -12 pm From the DNR website: Wood-Rill SNA preserves an outstanding example of Sugar Maple "Big Woods" forest. This forest type is ranked S2, or imperiled, in the state and is increasingly rare in the developing metro-area. According to University of Minnesota Forest Ecologist Lee Frelich, individual trees in Wood-Rill range from seedlings to 350 years old, with many trees between 120-180 years old. The oldest trees that Frelich has core-dated are sugar maples. "But none of the trees are as old as the forest," he notes. "Analysis of data from pond sediment indicates that the big woods forest community replaced oak savanna at this site about the year 1300 AD. That tells us that the big woods forest here is roughly 700 years old." Uplands host a closed-canopy forest of trees over 90 feet tall, the largest with diameters of nearly 3 feet at breast height. Dominant canopy trees included red oak, basswood, sugar maple and white oak. In the more poorly drained lowlands, the dominant trees are red maple, black ash, hackberry, basswood and green ash. Large, downed trees are scattered on the forest floor in various stages of decay. The occasional gap created in the canopy by one of these fallen giants is soon filled by young maples that reach for the light. |
The western access to Old Long Lake Road is closed at Wayzata Blvd. Attendees will need to take Old Long Lake Road from Wayzata Blvd at Wayzata Country Club and travel northwest about 0.5 mile. Google maps does not show the access being closed.
June 2019
|
Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden & Boardwalk
June 15th 9:30 - 11:30 am 3200 Glenwood Ave Minneapolis, MN 55405 The Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden and Bird Sanctuary is a spectacular fifteen acre native plant natural garden with trails meadering through woodlands, wetlands, and oak savannas that showcase more than 500 plant species and 140 migratory birds. |
August 2019
Tour of Angela's Native Plant Garden and Adjoining Park Restoration Adopt-a-Spot
Wednesday August 7th, 6:30 - 8:30 pm
5554 Nantucket Place, Minnetonka, MN
5554 Nantucket Place, Minnetonka, MN
Angela's delightful garden includes a new rain garden in the front yard where water is captured and directed from a driveway drain into the adjoining rain garden, prairie perennial gardens in the front, and a new native tree and shrub border in the backyard that will set the foundation and backdrop for future native plantings. After touring Angela's garden, we will step out the back gate to see her Purgatory Park volunteer restoration adopt-a-spot where she has removed invasive plants and planted native bare root trees and shrubs.
