We host free monthly tours of residential native plant gardens or local plant communities from May – August.
We have cancelled the spring 2020 tours due to safety concerns about COVID-19. Please check back here for any fall tour opportunities.
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. |
July 2019
Colonial Church, Edina Pond Restoration Tour
Tuesday July 23rd from 6:30-7:30 pm
Visit this shoreline restoration at Colonial Church Edina. This is an ongoing project spearheaded by Prairie Edge Wild Ones board member Carol Rothe. She has created this vibrant habitat for pollinators and other wildlife on a limited budget by using donated and rescued plants. In addition she collects seed to start plants and overwinter in milk jugs, which acts as a mini greenhouse. There is also a covered bridge and beautiful Memorial Garden with a water feature to enjoy.
Read more about this site's restoration here.
Park in lot at the east side of the church, off of Colonial Way and we will meet by the Memorial Garden & water garden feature. This garden was installed in memory of Sandy Halla of Halla Nursery fame.
Address: 6200 Colonial Way, Edina, MN 55436
Read more about this site's restoration here.
Park in lot at the east side of the church, off of Colonial Way and we will meet by the Memorial Garden & water garden feature. This garden was installed in memory of Sandy Halla of Halla Nursery fame.
Address: 6200 Colonial Way, Edina, MN 55436
August 2019
Tour of Angela's Native Plant Garden
Wednesday August 7th, 6:30 - 8:00 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 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. Angela will also talk about the space in the adjoining park she has adopted where she has removed invasive species and planted bare root native trees and shrubs.
Wednesday August 21st, 6:30-8:00 pm
Tour of Two Eden Prairie Residential Native Plant Gardens
Stop #1 @ 6:30 pm is the home of our chapter president, Marilynn Torkelson. Her residential native landscape has been evolving and growing since 2010. Visit in August to see the late summer blooms. This yard contains 3 rain gardens, a boulevard garden, shoreline restoration and backyard hedgerows that provide shelter and food for birds, pollinators and other wildlife.
Address: 8956 Braxton Drive, Eden Prairie
Stop #2 is a tour of a residential shoreline restoration. Homeowners Matt and Carrie received a watershed grant to install a shoreline buffer. Their beautiful buffer has inspired their neighbors to plant their own, creating wonderful connected habitat for wildlife. Since installing the shoreline planting, the homeowners then added a raingarden and boulevard garden to collect and filter water runoff from their driveway.
Address provided after Stop #1 above (a few blocks away)
