Friends of the Wildflower Garden
P. O. Box 3793
Minneapolis, MN 55403
News Update from the Friends
The 2025 Guest Lecture Meeting
All are welcome
The Annual Friends of the Wildflower Garden Guest Lecture will be Tuesday, October 14, 2025 at 7PM in the Fireside Room, Eddie Manderville Chalet, Theodore Wirth Regional Park (parking at the Golf Course lot).
Phyllis Root will speak on Chasing Wildflowers.
Presenting her adventures of chasing wildflowers throughout their unique Minnesota habitats. Phyllis is author of 50 children’s books including the Big Belching Bog, Plant a Pocket of Prairie, and The Lost Forest. She and photographer Kelly Povo have written Searching for Minnesota’s Native Wildflowers and their newest book Chasing Wildflowers.
Big Hill Books in Bryn Mawr will be selling Root's books at the event.
Can't make it to the meeting in person?
The meeting will be available via Zoom on the link shown below.
For remote access use this link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/81184166046?pwd=ppklC3rIuDGf8Fhw4EG1XmEhva5ady.1
Meeting ID: 811 8416 6046
Passcode: 431086
Garden entrance renovatioin
The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board (MPRB) is in the planning stages for a major renovation of the entrance approach to the Wildflower Garden.
The purpose of this is outlined in the following MPRB project plan:
The Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden Entrance Renovation Project looks to renovate and reimagine the entrance into the wildflower garden. This project will improve the entry experience and access from the beginning as soon as visitors exit off Theodore Wirth Parkway all the way through the garden gates. Areas of focus include:
1. Improved walking trails and ADA access to the garden entrance gate from the existing parking lot.
2. A public gathering space for outdoor learning and education.
3. Enhanced welcoming experience by bringing the garden beyond the renovated entrance gate.
The Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden Renovation Project will build upon the vision outlined with the 2015-approved Theodore Wirth Regional Park Plan. This project will also follow guidance by the 2022 community findings that were developed and recommendations at that time.
Two public meetings have already been held and an on-line survey has been available for interested parties to comment.
The MPRB planners have had two meetings with the Friends board of directors to review the project and receive our comments. We will continue to be involved as this project moves toward final planning stage.
For details of the two proposed example designs illustrated above and for updates on this project please visit the Wildflower Garden section of the MPRB web site.
MPRB celebrates The Friends
On Thursday evening July 17 the leadership of the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board (MPRB) held an event celebrating the work of the Friends of the Wildflower Garden over the past decades.
Superintendent Al Bangoura specifically highlighted two recent efforts - the Friends $95,000 contribution for completing the new fencing on the east side of the Wildflower Garden and the 20 years of effort of the Friends Invasive Plant Action Group (FIPAG), initiated and led by Jim Proctor, in removing invasives and restoring native habitat in Volunteer Stewardship Area surrounding the Garden. Fittingly, the event was held on the southeast hillside next to the new fence and overlooking the hillside where the volunteers of FIPAG have been restoring the oak savanna habitat that once covered that area of the Wirth Park.
Besides Mr. Bangoura, Commissioner Meg Forney, Friends President Jennifer Olson and Jim Proctor spoke, followed by a tour of the restoration area led by Jim Proctor.
Thanks to Superintendent Bangoura, Commissioner Forney, the leadership of the Environmental Stewardship Division of the MPRB and Garden Curator Susan Wilkins, all of whom were present, for putting on this event, and to all the volunteers who enable the success of the Friends.
Below: MPRB Commissioner Meg Forney speaking at the Friends celebration. Superintendent Al Bangoura at right. Photo G D Bebeau.
FIPAG has a new name.
The Volunteer Stewardship Area which surrounds the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden has been renamed "The Greater Eloise Volunteer Stewardship Area." Improving the natural habitat in this area which buffers the Wildflower Garden has been the focus of the Friends Invasive Plant Action Group (FIPAG) since 2007. In accord with the renamed area, FIPAG volunteers will now be called "Greater Eloise Stewards."
Restoration work in the oak savanna continues in 2025:
The Greater Eloise Stewards have been busy every month this year primarily east and southeast of the Wildflower Garden, clearing buckthorn, garlic mustard, planting, protecting the slopes with wattles and controlling new buckthorn growth.
The photos below show the development of the area tentatively named “Anwatin savanna,” near a large pond with all the non-native woody plants removed or cutback for further treatment. Seeds of dozens of species that were spread in the fall and over the winter are germinating on the greening slopes. Sedges are flourishing.
Below: Summer 2025. This panoramic photo shows the entire hillside down to the pond with the corner of the new Garden fence at the left. Photo Jim Proctor
[Larger Image]
Below: A partial view of the hillside and pond after the initial removal of buckthorn. The stumps are later stripped of new growth and die. Photo Jim Proctor.
Below: A panorama of a hillside in the SE work area showing winter work. Photo Jim Proctor. [larger photo.]
Below: No, these are not foragers, but FIPAG volunteers uprooting buckthorn plants and stripping new growth from previously cut buckthorn in Wirth Park. Photo - Jim Proctor.
A list of species seeded includes: Poverty oat grass, wood reed grass, gray wood sedge, beak grass, nodding fescue, little bluestem, side-oats grama, black-eyed Susan, shooting star, Canada milk-vetch, partridge pea, ground plum, white and purple prairie-clover, leadplant, prairie dropseed, junegrass, cream wild indigo, whorled milkweed, bottlebrush grass, and many more!
60 Friends-supported land stewardship volunteers have contributed more than 580 hours in the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden Volunteer Stewardship Area (warmly referred to as the Greater Eloise VSA) from January 1-June 1, 2025 with support from the Garden Curator.
Volunteer Greeters:
In 2024, 44 Friends volunteers have staffed both the entry Kiosk and the shelter for the 54th consecutive year, the Martha Crone Shelter. Through Over 50,000 people were engaged at the Garden with staff and volunteers. In 2025, 50 volunteers went through training. By the beginning of June 2025 over 17,000 persons have had a personal contact with a volunteer or staff member in the Garden. 458 hours of volunteer time have been logged up to June 1 this year.
Your donations
You should know that your support contributions to the Friends are entirely used for these Garden projects and our other mission programs. Our administrative expenses are small, on average, 5% of revenue or less, and these expenses are funded from non-contribution revenue.
If you want to read more about the historical aspects of the Garden and the things the Friends have accomplished over the last 73 years visit the "garden history tab" and the "Friends history tab." Links at the bottom of this page.