This free tour runs from 1 to 3 p.m., Sunday, August 6, starting at Hancock Beach. 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