Events

This showing of Hometown Habitat: Stories of Bringing Nature Home is part of the Michigan Tech Sustainability Film Series and funded by the Keweenaw Wild Ones.

For the last several decades, global bird and insect populations have been plummeting. Unlike many looming environmental catastrophes, however, these can be addressed in part by individuals willing to make a difference in their yards and communities. The solution: change the way we approach landscaping. In Hometown Habitat, renowned entomologist and best-selling author Douglas Tallamy invites us to incorporate native plants into our yards and cityscapes, where they provide life-saving "hometown habitat" for pollinators, birds and other wildlife. Filmmaker Catherine Zimmerman traveled around the U.S. to visit hometown habitat heroes and film their stories of community commitment to conservation landscaping. Zimmerman shares these stories to re-awaken and re-define our relationship with nature—and perhaps inspire us to create our own hometown habitats.

The showing is free. A donation of $5 is requested to help defray costs of the Sustainability Film Series.

About the filmmaker
Catherine Zimmerman, an award-winning director of photography, is a documentary filmmaker working primarily on education and environmental issues. Her environmental videos include global warming documentaries for CNN Presents and New York Times Television; Save Rainforests/Save Lives, Freshfarm Markets, Wildlife Without Borders: Connecting People and Nature in the Americas, and America’s Sustainable Garden: United States Botanic Garden.

Catherine is a certified horticulturist and landscape designer-based SW Ohio. She is accredited in organic land care through the Northeast Organic Farmers Association and has designed and taught a course in organic landscaping for the USDA Graduate School Horticulture program. Catherine hopes her projects will help fire up the movement toward making natural landscapes the new landscaping norm.

The Sustainability Film Series is cosponsored by Friends of the Land of Keweenaw, Lake Superior Stewardship Initiative, College of Forest Resources and Environmental Science, Keweenaw Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, MTU Sustainability Demonstration House, Keweenaw Land Trust, and the Department of Social Sciences Sustainability Sciences Program.

For members of the Keweenaw Chapter.

To sign up, contact Jeannie DeClerck or Marcia Goodrich.

Introductions (What are your design projects for 2023?)
Proposed project for Nara Nature Park (Kristine Bradof)
As time allows: Why Native Plants are Key to Saving… Doug Tallamy (with a photo error) and Grow a Forest in Your Backyard
Planning for the next Design Studio on February 18

Guided discussion on various native plant topics. Limited to WOK members.

Marcia Goodrich, president of Keweenaw Wild Ones, will discuss the value of native plants, focusing on their critical role in America's ecosystems and the benefits natives bring to homeowners and communities. She will also include examples of local native gardens, sources for buying native plants, common misconceptions, and more.

"Why Natives?" is presented in partnership with the Keweenaw Garden Club.

The final part of our Start in Your Yard initiative, we are holding the first of four discussion groups on Owen Wormser's "Lawns into Meadows."

This was the second of four get-togethers to discuss Owen Wormser's "Lawns Into Meadows."

FOR KEWEENAW WILD ONES MEMBERS ONLY, a discussion group focussing on gardening topics.

Agenda for next meeting:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HUg_yJuYcCq1aHF8380K5xkeSfSXzDRliexZ9MaBavY/edit#

Topics and resources (homework) - 

Part 1 -- Garden Design (Oak Openings WO group in S Michigan and into Ohio)
Zoning the Garden: How to Please Nature and YOur Neighbors (video)
Zoning the Garden worksheet - Print out the worksheet and cut out the diagrams of the proprietary and garden elements 
Part 2 -- Color theory for gardeners that goes beyond the basic color wheel (Resources from Julie: Let’s focus on value and saturation. Warning: she’s not a native plant designer and a lot of her examples use barberry. 

Review these in order
Part 1 https://notanothergardeningblog.com/2014/11/28/colouring-your-garden/
Part 2 https://notanothergardeningblog.com/2015/01/01/colouring-your-garden-part-2/
Part 3 https://notanothergardeningblog.com/2015/01/28/colouring-your-garden-part-3-value-added/
Part 4 https://notanothergardeningblog.com/2015/02/24/colouring-your-garden-part-4-saturated-solutions/
Part 5 https://notanothergardeningblog.com/2015/03/28/fifty-shades-of-gray-colouring-your-garden-part-5/

Regular meeting of Keweenaw Wild Ones

This is the third meeting of our Start In Your Yard book club to discuss "Lawns into Meadows," by Owen Wormser. The aim of this series is to introduce people to the value of native plants and give them the tools to start their own native gardens and meadows.

We'll be discussing pages 105-147.

We'll prepare for our final get-together by watching Owen Wormser's talk "Lawns Into Meadows," hosted by Tufts University: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhOy9nhSUao .

We'll also have a drawing to determine the winners of our door prizes, a $100 meadow garden from Designs by Nature U.P. Native Plants, a $20 gift certificate from Dennis Greenhouse, and two $10 gift certificates for Keweenaw Wild Ones' plant sale.

This meeting began with a presentation by one of our members on how to assemble brush piles. It went great, except that I forgot to record her talk. 🙁

Every spring, Keweenaw Wild Ones partners with a couple other organizations on this symposium, which we hold on a Saturday morning and includes three speakers. For the last couple years, we've been able to afford a professional speaker, which has raised the bar. Overall, it takes a lot of work, but it's well worth it. We get lots of good feedback from participants.

This year, we had Nancy Lawson as our keynote. We also had an MSU Extension educator emeritus, who spoke on predatory and parasitoid insects and their role in the garden. Finally, we hosted a local shoreline contractor, who discussed the value of "soft shorelines" and gave lots of information on the problems with hard shorelines like sea walls and what's involved in establishing a soft shoreline using native plants.

WOK was invited by Laurie Johnson of the Central UP chapter to accompany them on a tour. This is an exceptional nursery, growing plants from locally harvested seeds. She uses no insecticides! 

We will be transplanting seedlings from trays into our pots for our fundraiser this summer.

Regular meeting of our chapter, plus approval of bylaws and election of officers

This is a perfect opportunity to tour an established native garden as well as do some hands on work weeding, planning, and planting natives. If you are new to native gardening and wondering where to start, this is a great event to learn some lessons you can apply to your own yard.

The event is any time between 5:30 and 8:30 pm, so please stop by whenever you can. The Marsin Nature Retreat is 6.9 miles from M26 on Canal Road. Turn right at Red Brick Road. The retreat is on the left, #52864.

This is the start of the garden tours (virtual and in person) we will be planning this summer based on member feedback. 

Keweenaw Wild Ones will dedicate a park bench in the memory of our friend Kathe Salmi, who was our membership chair and very active in the chapter.

Regular meeting of the WOK board of directors. All members are welcome.

We'll meet at the Houghton Applebee's and carpool to the Robert Brown Plant Preserve, a Michigan Nature Association property located a few miles west of Painesdale. After our walk, we'll return to Applebee's for food, drinks, and fun.

Members gathered to transplant seedlings into pots for our annual plant sales.

A native plant sale for members only. This year, because of cool weather and ongoing farmers' market sales, we haven't had enough mature plants in our inventory for our usual online sale. Still, we wanted to make plants available to our members. So we decided to have a popup sale to let members come by and pick out their own plants from the limited inventory. Later in the year, when the smaller seedlings get bigger, we'll have an online sale including the public.

Order plants online at keweenaw.wildones.org and pick them up Saturday, August 12, between 10 a.m and noon and Sunday, Aug. 13, between 1 and 3 p.m.

Grab an ice cream cone, pick up your map, and check out the bioswale. Then drive (or carpool) to the other gardens, and discover the beauty of native plants.

Hancock Beach features a large bioswale in its parking lot. A bioswale is like a rain garden, designed to capture excess stormwater. This island of deep-rooted flowers and grasses helps prevent erosion in the city park. Plus, it provides a refuge for birds, pollinators, and other wildlife and a colorful landscape for beach visitors. Plants to see: prairie blazing star, red milkweed, false sunflower

The second stop on our tour is a Hancock garden famous for its nonstop flowers. Not everyone knows that it features many natives. Want to take some home? The gardener will be giving away free seedlings. Plants to see: lanceleaf and threadleaf coreopsis, several varieties of liatris, prairie clover, pale purple coneflower, pearly everlasting

The third and final garden is southeast of Dollar Bay in the Point Mills area. This rambling landscape is a butterfly magnet and overlooks the Keweenaw Waterway. Check out the prairie installed over the stamp sand shoreline. Want to grow some of these natives for yourself? Bring a container; the gardener is inviting visitors to collect seeds. Plants to see: butterfly weed, coneflowers, evening primrose, blue false indigo (for its seeds), bergamot, spiderwort, grasses, asters

Six members weeded and tidied for about two hours.

Members and the public can order from our online plant sale. Pickup is 4-6 pm. Wednesday, Sept. 6, for members. For nonmembers, pickup is 10 a.m. - noon Saturday, Sept. 9 and 1-3 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 10. 

A group effort to tidy up a public native garden site.

Those who have ordered plants on our online plant sale can pick them up at President Marcia's house.

Our annual meeting opens with libations and a potluck. We'll announce the results of our board of directors election and elect officers. President Marcia Goodrich will give a brief annual report, and then we'll hold our regular meeting.

Join Wild Ones Honorary Director Heather Holm as she explores the nesting habitats, life cycles, pollen collection, brood rearing, and general characteristics of some of the most common native bees in eastern North America, while highlighting the pollination of native plants and the mutualism between native plants and native bees.

When creating and managing thriving habitats for native bees, many factors such as seasonal phenology, nesting strategies, and flower preferences must be considered—and with approximately 3,600 species in North America (north of Mexico), there are many unique aspects to keep in mind when managing successful landscapes for bees. 

This was a regular meeting of our chapter.

HOUGHTON, Mich.-Land owners are faced with plenty of challenges: How do I manage this woodlot? Am I stuck with this field of spotted knapweed? Could I start a (pick one) native prairie/hobby farm/bison ranch?

Youtube videos only take you so far. Fortunately, you can get free, professional advice-and sometimes financial help-right here in the Keweenaw, from the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).

District conservationist Anne Collins will discuss NRCS programs at her talk, “Together We Can: Partnering with NRCS to Achieve Your Land Management Goals,” set for 6 p.m., Wednesday, Nov. 1, at the Portage Lake District Library Community Room. The talk is sponsored by the Wild Ones Keweenaw Chapter.

NRCS programs target many types of land use situations, including big and small farms;  non-industrial private forests, large or small; pollinator plantings; invasive species; increasing biodiversity; and more.

“What drives us is what the landowner wants and resource concerns on the land,” said Collins. “We provide technical advice, and we can also help you apply for grants.” Funding is available for a variety of projects, such as tree planting for wildlife and native plant restoration.

“If you have forested land, we can help you develop a management plan, which opens the door to lots of different programs,” she said.

The local NRCS office, located in Baraga, serves Houghton, Keweenaw, Baraga and Ontonagon counties. For more information contact Keweenaw Wild Ones at [email protected] .

Join us for an enlightening webinar featuring authors, Neil Diboll and Hilary Cox, as they present their latest book, "The Gardener’s Guide to Prairie Plants." This comprehensive compendium is a treasure trove of knowledge for gardeners looking to incorporate native prairie plants into their landscapes. Neil and Hilary will delve into the making and application of this essential guide, sharing rich historical and ecological insights about prairie ecosystems, all while showcasing stunning images of prairie flora. 

Regular board meeting

All chapter members are invited for free pizza and nonalcoholic drinks. We'll begin at 5:30 p.m. with a cash bar and social hour, followed by pizza at 6 p.m. The party will feature door prizes and freebies, plus an optional gift exchange.

Thanks to everyone who has helped make this such a great year for Keweenaw Wild Ones!