Wild Ones Twin Cities Minnesota

September Program & Monarch Festival

September 18, 2025

Social 6:30 pm. | Program 7:00 pm

Richfield Community Center, 7000 Nicollet Ave

Asters and Goldenrod:

Powerhouse Plants for Pollinators

Presenter: Rhonda Fleming Hayes

You see them blooming on roadsides in the fall, these beauties of blue, purple, and gold. They are some of the most important plants for pollinators as the growing season comes to an end. Learn more about their value for pollinators, the different varieties, and how to grow them in your garden.

Rhonda is a freelance writer and author. Her work has been published in the Star Tribune, Northern Gardener, Mpls St Paul magazine, Southern Living, Midwest Living and more. Her first book was Pollinator Friendly Gardening and coming in Spring 2026 is Gardening for Life: Strategies for Easier, Greener, More Joyful Gardening as We Age.

Minneapolis Monarch Festival

Saturday, September 6, 2025 | 10 am-4 pm

The Festival celebrates the monarch butterfly amazing 2,300 mile migration from Minnesota to Mexico with music, food, dance, hands-on art, native plant sales and plenty of opportunities to get up close with monarch butterflies, learn about their habitats, and what you can do to make a difference.

SIGN UP HERE to VOLUNTEER

We need volunteers at the Minneapolis Monarch Festival (Festival de la Monarca) to help visitors learn more about Nokomis Naturescape and Wild Ones, and their message of growing native plant habitat. Please join us!

The Nokomis Naturescape is located on Lake Nokomis in Minneapolis at 50th St. and Nokomis Parkway. It is a 4-acre landscape planted only with Minnesota native plant species and is an official Monarch Waystation, National Wildlife Federation Backyard Habitat, and the original site for this festival.

The Wild Ones is a non-profit environmental organization dedicated to educating about preserving and restoring biodiversity of our native plant communities, beginning in our own yards and gardens. Since 2002, Wild Ones Twin Cities has helped the area's residents maintain the Nokomis Naturescape demonstration gardens and led in native plant educational outreach..

Questions? Email Vicki Bonk at vbonk@uswireless.com

See you at the Habitat Tent!

August Garden Tour

SATURDAY | AUGUST 9, 2025 | 10 am - 12 pm

Bria Abeles-Allison and Kendra Rysan's Indigo House Prairie in South Minneapolis

3615 34th Ave S, Minneapolis

Wild Ones Twin Cities invites you to join us for a tour of Bria and Kendra's Indigo House Prairie gardens in south Minneapolis. These gardens have gone through a tremendous transition over the last four years. Join to hear about the process taken, mistakes made, and discussion on future management decisions.

In May 2021 the backyard was a conventional grass yard, by Summer 2022 it had transformed to a lush non-native garden, and by Summer 2023 was once again in transition to a fully native garden with the addition of a new alley pocket prairie planted with Lawns to Legumes funding.

In Spring and Summer 2024 the rest of the backyard was densely planted with 150+ species of self-winter-sown MN natives and seeded with additional grasses in January 2025. The shady front yard remained all hostas and creeping bellflower until they were removed Fall 2024 in preparation for 2025 planting. Recently Bria finished their design and installation of a native plant boulevard garden as Kendra continues to transition shady areas into a woodland garden.

The back yard is now a well-loved 1-3 year old native prairie. The focus of this prairie has been on creation of habitat diversity, early on satisfying Bria's urge to have as many plant species as possible, and now being reined in with native plant communities in mind. Tour guests will see dead-hedge type pathway edging, creative gutter routing, early establishment phase green mulch and rock paths, and a lot of passion.

Bria and Kendra are looking forward to sharing their whimsical gardens with you all.

Accessibility: Street parking, moderately narrow paths with some uneven footing, limited seating available. Please let us know if there are accommodations we can make to enable you to attend!

SIGN UP HERE

to VOLUNTEER at the

Minneapolis Monarch Festival!

Saturday, September 6, 2025 | 10 am-4 pm

Questions? Email Vicki Bonk at vbonk@uswireless.com

See you at the Habitat Tent!

SATURDAY | JULY 12, 2025 | 10 am - 12 pm

Tour Emily's Gardens in West St Paul

Emily discovered her passion for native plants when a neighbor in Minneapolis pointed out a hummingbird hawk-moth (Macdroglossum stellatarum) in their wildlife habitat garden.

Emily and Michael Benson, along with their two young sons, moved to Minnesota seven years ago. A few years later they moved to their new home in West St Paul. The nearly one-acre lot near Dodge Nature Center was riddled with invasives, including buckthorn, crown vetch, bindweed and lawn weeds. It didn't take long for Emily to get started. She began to deal with invasives and created new gardens with a variety of native plants.

After the first few years of gardening with purchased plants, Emily learned about winter sowing and took full advantage. In the winter of 2023, she started 120 species in 150 jugs, the following winter added another 105 species in 120 plugs. Her gardens

now include prairie, woodland (newly established, including a spring 2025 installation) hedgerows and shrubs, pollinators, wildlife.

Emily said her interest is much more about creating habitat, not designing for the human eye. She wants to create a place where birds and insects are happy, getting what they need for a full life cycle. She is somewhat intentional in design, including cues to care that offer a more naturalized aesthetic. They are still working to remove invasives, future plans include adding a pond.

While the gardens are all Emily's, her husband Michael is a big help when it comes to moving mulch, and her sons enjoyed watching all the insects that visit their gardens. They maintain areas of lawn for pathways, soccer practice and other lawn activities.

Accessibility: Ample street parking. Nothing is super steep, some of the gardens are on a hill with stepping stones. Some may be challenged walking the path.