Calendar

POSTPONED DUE TO BAD WEATHER!!!!

This event has been postponed until June 10, 2026, because of the hazardous weather. 

Seasonal cycles, species interactions, and indigenous concepts of reciprocity can all lead us to create a community of mutual support. Ecological resilience and social resilience follow the same patterns of shared presence, contribution, and care.

About Our Presenter

Shawn Severance leads nature education and public programming for Washtenaw County Parks, creating hands-on experiences that connect people with local ecosystems. Her work centers on ecological literacy, seasonal natural history, and fostering community engagement with the outdoors.

In this special collaboration, Robin Wall Kimmerer, author, botanist, and founder of Plant Baby Plant, joins youth leader and Nurture Natives founder Esther Bonney for an intergenerational conversation about belonging, reciprocity, and native plant action. 

Together, they will explore questions such as:

How do we create opportunities for young people to have a voice and feel empowered, even when they are not homeowners or decision makers?What kinds of relationships and mentorships help people stay engaged in native plant work over decades?Why do stories, shared practices, and community invitations matter just as much as plant lists?

Robin and Esther will reflect on what invites people into this work, what keeps them here, and what elders and youth have to teach each other.

A native landscape bursts with life, evolving each season to offer new opportunities to observe, learn, and nurture. This presentation will take a stroll through the year, highlighting small and meaningful moments that often go unnoticed: early spring bloomers, abundant summer flowers, fall wildlife hidden in plain sight, and winter sowing and planning. Whether you’re new to native plants or already cultivating habitat, this talk blends observation, wildlife-friendly stewardship, and seasonal care to help you feel more connected to your landscape year-round.

About Our Presenter

Lisa Denys holds a B.S. in Biology from Eastern Michigan University and has worked as an Environmental Educator and Master Rain Gardener Instructor. A lifelong gardener, she helped found the Wild Ones Wayne County Michigan Chapter in 2024 and enjoys supporting others in creating meaningful, wildlife-friendly landscapes.

PARKING: Metered parking is available at Matthaei Botanical Gardens; Matthaei members park for free.

Can’t make it in person? Join us via Zoom!

Link to the Wild Ones Ann Arbor Area Monthly Meeting. Video of the session will be available on the Wild Ones Ann Arbor Area YouTube channel within a few days. 

Our upcoming webinar with Basil Camu explores practical, evidence based ways to heal suburban and urban landscapes by working with trees, soil, and natural systems, drawing on real world practices from Leaf & Limb and community centered models for restoring life where we live, work, and play.!  

Mitchell Swindell, of Detroit Wildflower Nursery, will begin by explaining why he started a native wildflowers nursery and how it fulfills his vision of seeing native more plants in the Detroit area.  He will share his advice on site preparation, planting considerations, plant installation, and garden maintenance. He will talk about plant selection for various types of natural landscapes by focusing on the right plant for the right place. He will also offer strategies for coping with deer and lists of deer-resistant plants.

About Our Presenter

Mitchell Swindell, born and raised in metro-Detroit and a University of Michigan alumnus, has been growing native plants for nearly a decade and sharing them with others for almost as long. He is the owner of Detroit Wildflower Nursery, a backyard retail nursery located at his one-acre home in Farmington Hills, specializing in perennial wildflowers native to Michigan and the Great Lakes region. The nursery’s mission is to raise awareness, provide education, and make Michigan native plants more accessible throughout the metro-Detroit area—empowering everyone to create meaningful wildlife habitat right in their own backyards. For Mitchell, this work is about more than just gardening; it’s about restoring balance and reconnecting people with the natural world.

PARKING: Metered parking is available at Matthaei Botanical Gardens; Matthaei members park for free.

Can’t make it in person? Join us via Zoom!

Link to the Wild Ones Ann Arbor Area Monthly Meeting. Video of the session will be available on the Wild Ones Ann Arbor Area YouTube channel within a few days. 

Join Joey Santore, creator of Crime Pays But Botany Doesn’t, for a candid Wild Ones National Webinar examining how inherited garden aesthetics shape native plant landscapes. Drawing on field experience and real ecology, Joey challenges tidy design norms and explores why dense, irregular plant communities are often the most resilient and ecologically sound.

Ever wondered how YOU can contribute to real scientific research? No matter what topic you're interested in, you can turn your curiosity into action with Community Science! In this presentation, you’ll learn about the importance of this growing movement and how you can start building your knowledge and expertise, all while contributing to local and global projects—anytime and anywhere! With Community Science people of all ages and experience levels can get involved and make a difference, all while spending time outside and connecting with nature.

About our presenter

Momcat Kelly Konieczki is an outdoor educator and citizen scientist who is passionate about pollinators and environmental stewardship. She does volunteer work and outreach at Detroit Butterfly Nursery and is a SciStarter Ambassador. Kelly enjoys combining her love of art and photography to share observations of nature and help others tune into the endless relationships within the natural world. She is the Community Science Chair for Wild Ones Wayne County Chapter and also serves on Grosse Pointe Park's Beautification Commission where she leads the Mayors' Monarch Pledge, a national initiative that helps guide cities toward being more pollinator-friendly. 

 PARKING: Metered parking is available at Matthaei Botanical Gardens; Matthaei members park for free.

Can’t make it in person? Join us via Zoom!

Link to the Wild Ones Ann Arbor Area Monthly Meeting. Video of the session will be available on the Wild Ones Ann Arbor Area YouTube channel within a few days. 

Join award-winning author, photographer, and educator Rick Darke for What Is Wild and Why It Matters, a free national webinar on Tuesday, April 28th at 10 am CT. Discover how inviting a bit of authentic wildness can create a vibrant landscape that sustains you and local biodiversity. This national event is presented in collaboration between Wild Ones and Homegrown National Park.

NOTE: THIS IS A FIELD TRIP! WE WILL SHARE DETAILS ABOUT REQUIRED REGISTRATION FOR CHARTERED MOTOR COACH TRANSPORTATION WITH MEMBERS VIA EMAIL.  Start and end times listed above are for departure and return times at Matthaei Botanical Gardens. The event is free but there will be a charge for the motor coach. 

Members of Wild Ones and their guests are invited to join us for a tour of Zenvironment, located in the Oak Openings Region of northwest Ohio. Our tour guides, owners Jon and Susan Cross, are on a mission to restore their 20 acres of rare woodland, sand barren, and wet prairie. Their recipe for conservation models how private landowners can contribute to healthy environments, clean water, and native species repopulation. 

The Crosses will guide us through their property, identifying rare native wild flowers and outlining conservation efforts as we go. The Crosses previously shared their photo presentation with us at the November 2025 Wild Ones Ann Arbor Area meeting (Video). 

LOCATION AND TRANSPORTATION

Zenvironment is located southwest of Toledo; our chartered motor coach trip will take about one hour and 15 minutes each way.  

Open to Wild Ones members and their guests.

Seasonal cycles, species interactions, and indigenous concepts of reciprocity can all lead us to create a community of mutual support. Ecological resilience and social resilience follow the same patterns of shared presence, contribution, and care.

About Our Presenter

Shawn Severance leads nature education and public programming for Washtenaw County Parks, creating hands-on experiences that connect people with local ecosystems. Her work centers on ecological literacy, seasonal natural history, and fostering community engagement with the outdoors.

Join us for a tour of the backyard of Wild Ones Ann Arbor Area member Dina Lehmann-Kim, led by William Kirst of Adapt Landscapes, who designed and installed the native landscape. 

Dina Lehmann-Kim on Her Native Garden

Last year, when we first moved into our new home, there was nothing in our garden beyond sandy soil and various weeds. Our single-family home is one of the first to be completed in a new development that operates as a condo association (CA). The CA allows owners to have their own gardens in the back of the home but specifies that the garden dimensions must be no bigger than 30 feet long and no wider than the length of the house. In our case, the garden is a little over 1,500 square feet, which was too large for my husband and me to fill in one growing season (another requirement of the CA was that the garden could not be a blank space for longer than one season). Our goal was to fill the space to the greatest extent possible with native plants. We also wanted the garden to have hedgerow to provide shelter for local birds.  A related goal was to showcase the beauty of native plants for future homeowners while demonstrating the ecological function that even a relatively small space can offer.  

We contracted with Adapt Landscapes for the design and plant installation.  Adapt is an ecological landscaping company specializing in creating native plant and perennial food landscapes that are both beautiful and functional—spaces that support biodiversity, reduce maintenance, and connect people more closely with the land around them. Visitors will walk on fescue paths to view over 20 native plants, trees, and shrubs and will have copies of the garden design and a plant key to guide them.    

About Wlliam Kirst, Adapt Landscapes

William Kirst is the founder of Adapt Landscapes and Adapt Community Supported Ecology, bringing over 20 years of experience as an ecologist to his work. At Adapt, William co-leads full-service landscape design, stewardship and maintenance planning, installation, and care for homeowners, businesses, and organizations across Southeast Michigan. He combines ecological knowledge with hands-on experience to create landscapes that are beautiful and naturally resilient.

Join the City of Ann Arbor's Office of Sustainability and Innovations (OSI) and Wild Ones Ann Arbor Area for a guided tree walk of Wurster Park! Learn about the tree species in the park, how to identify them, and the many benefits they provide for resilience, sustainability, and more. One of our stops will be at the park's grand Chinkapin Oak, a Champion Tree (the largest of its species known to grow in the city) that measures over 100 feet tall. Plus, hear about OSI's various programs under the A2ZERO Carbon Neutrality Plan that help to build resilience through our natural features. 

This guided tree walk will follow a portion of OSI's Old West Side Neighborhood Tree Walk, a self-guided walk that is easy to follow on a smart phone or tablet and will lead you through the neighborhood, helping you identify trees while providing some fun and interesting facts about those trees and the history of the neighborhood. The map of the Old West Side Tree Walk—and twelve others for neighborhoods across the city— can be found Neighborhood Tree Walks section of the 10,000 Trees Initiative page of the City of Ann Arbor website

About Our Guide

Sean Reynolds (he/him) is a Senior Analyst with the City of Ann Arbor's Office of Sustainability and Innovations. In this role, Sean oversees work on various environmental and community resilience programs and initiatives. He has prior urban forestry experience through Casey Trees, a non-profit in Washington, D.C., and h​as an M.S. degree in Forestry from Auburn University. In his spare time, he enjoys hiking, reading, cooking, and spending time with his husband Blake and their two cats, Glacier and River.​ 

Details coming soon! 

Details coming soon! 

Details coming soon!