Wild Ones Twin Cities Minnesota: Naturescape

#1 NN GARDENEERING SESSION

DATE & TIME: Tuesday, May 9, 6-8pm

LOCATION: 50th Street and Nokomis Parkway, Minneapolis 55417

Hello Gardeners!

The time has arrived to revisit our adopted Nokomis Naturescape Boulevard Garden. It will be good to reconnect once again, after another long Minnesota winter. I hope to see how the garden is faring soon and send some photos your way. In the meantime, here is the 2023 Nokomis Naturescape Gardeneering Calendar and some other news.

For years, we have called our Nokomis Naturescape gardening “gardeneering" and ourselves “gardeneers", because we are volunteer stewards and we are part of a pioneering movement - native plant habitat gardening. We are working to help restore and to promote the value of the native plants that evolved here and were the indigenous people’s cared-for landscape before European settlement. Native plant gardening is a sometimes daunting and often rewarding endeavor - a mix of the continuum of success to progress to failure. In other words, a learning journey. Here’s to our next venture onward!

Below are 2 informative and positive links about the benefits of native plants and how to “gardeneer”.

First, from local expert on pollinators and native plants, Heather Holm, a new story map on Soft Landings, a project she developed with our NN co-leader Leslie Pilgrim. This is indeed an elegant, doable way to help biodiversity on many levels.

Second, a spot-on news video about the connection between spring wildflowers and native bees.

Hope you have the opportunity to get out into nature’s wilder places where the native plants roam and/or are enjoying them in your yard or nearby garden. Here are two photos taken this spring of two favorite spring harbingers - bloodroot residing in woodland areas and pasque flower of the prairie/oak savannas. We have neither at the Naturescape but wouldn’t it be nice?

A trip to nearby Nine Mile Creek’s "crocus hill”
to see the native American pasque flower
on a south-facing prairie hilltop,
their preferred setting.
This pasque flower is taking a “lotus position”.
Photo taken 4/23/23.